Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 23:02:13 -0600 From: Tom Emerson Subject: ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPT. SEVENTEEN ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPTER SEVENTEEN This picks up the story from Temp. File End 12/30/02 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN "Jose's cumming in me," Tina whispered. Lord, who could blame him for that? She was a ten-year-old pixie, he a rangy, athletic seventeen year old. They'd been together for an almost impossible hour, his hard, young-adult body like a healthy oak between her long, slim legs as she told her roundabout story of settling a family debt. I could feel nothing, so I changed from half lying over their hot, young bodies so I could look. "It almost hurts," the girl panted, and I could see she wasn't exaggerating. A strong, pulsing gush of heavy, white semen flowed from their joining, down over her little-girl bubble bottom, pooling thickly on the top sheet of my bed. Usually in my hand, sometimes in my mouth, my young male friend had always been copious and full, ejaculating calmly, but like a well-mannered stag of eight or ten times his weight. With Tina, bless him, he was outdoing himself, and, little doubt, every other male in the vast country of Mexico. He was soaking her and flooding her, ravishing her in his gentle grip of iron, and having her as she was mewing in response to having him. It didn't last forever, only seemed to; it wasn't death and heaven, only seemed to be, and, for sure, it wasn't over until it was over. Finally, the taut muscles did slacken, the handsome, black-haired head dropped to the pillow beside the panting child, and Jose eased from Tina. The ten year old's hand found my right arm and pulled me firmly between her legs. Jose, resilient farm boy that he was, roused sufficiently to guide me, then took my former position, lying half on my back as I entered Tina's hot, tight young body, my penis tingling from her slick, salty wetness. Her small hands found my back, she wriggled and bucked gently, then sighed, her head lolling, as I entered fully, holding her cradled in my arms as if she was a little wife. "What happened last night?" I whispered, sensing she was still building toward an orgasm and wanted to hold off as long as possible so the experience could be as full for her as it had been for young Mr. de Lira Varela whose hot cum was still tingling. "Francisco had a friend," she whispered in response, her hands now in my hair and her legs relaxing to splay widely and comfortably beneath me, "and he watched what happened between Raul and me." "Did you like Raul?" I quizzed. "Very much," she answered, her voice low and comfortable-sounding, "he's cute and nice, even funny." So, again, we journeyed back in her young life, this time, not to Canada and the year before, but to a bungalow a mile away, and the previous night. "Pulease, no pinatas," the girls said a few moments after entering the expensively furnished house. "Outgrown them, already?" Francisco asked as he introduced the girl to Raul Cortez, his tall, athletic pool boy, age eighteen. "No," the girl replied with a smile, "it's just that every place Mom takes me, they think I've been waiting my entire life to hit a burro with a stick, and I'm o.d.'d, for the time being." "Well," Francisco responded, "you've come to the right place, and Tina," the sixty-year-old executive continued, "I want you to know that I've already transferred the money for the wool shop to your mother. Juan and I would like to have you stay, but you don't have to. I'm glad to be able to help you under any circumstances -- have a feeling you're worth it -- and you're free to go back to your hotel, no strings attached." "Mom said I didn't have to come, in the first place," the ten year old replied, "and I'm definitely here, body whole, mind at ease, and spirits soaring -- you guys ever seen Mexican television?" Both males laughed at the precocious imp, and both nearly fainted with relief as she let her small suitcase drop to the floor and found a place on the sofa, neither plumping herself down peremptorily, nor alighting all nervous and flighty, like a chickadee in a cattery. Nor did she say anything cute, like, "Let's roll, dudes, "the party girl's here, so where's the party?", "last one in's a rotten egg, "apples, anyone?", "treat or treat?", "deck the halls with clothes of dolly," or, "who's on first?" She just sat, knees together, tiny feet just reaching the floor, glowing in a blue and white checked summer dress. One could quite easily tell this about her: when she came to die she wasn't going to toss and turn over having been asleep for the trip. For some minutes the three sat talking about the trip down through the States, news of the Torreon area, the furniture business, and the weather. "You're a present for Raul," Francisco said, at last, "he's had some experience with young males, but he's never been with a female. He and I are friends, only. Is all that okay?" A writer naturally has to think of the sarcastic things a character might say in a given set of circumstances, "I only teach, I don't insuct," would be an example. Like huge mountains of other detritus, this doesn't get included, because, while fishing shouldn't be called "catching", writing should be called "deleting". Hard to believe, I know, I know, but a tremendous amount ends up on the copyroom floor, all of it bad, you'll be relieved to learn. While I've repeated attributed this nothing-but-the-best criteria to laziness, there is also a benevolent side in my grace at leaving some material for other writers. This puts me in mind of the corn scene in the book, "Andersonville," so it would be a good idea to look at the leavings and not concern yourself as to where they may have dropped from. Another essay so soon, it's only New Year's Day, but you'll have to forebear. I've been off fiction for two weeks and more, and so am relearning how hard it actually is. I need to ease back in, particularly because I gave the reinmuses free rein, and getting Prancer back behind Dancer, and Comet next to Cupid, requires time and patience. If it takes awhile, well, it's a long way up to my particular literary throne, nor am I helped by quiet holidays with everyone behaving ever so nicely. So many people are absolute monarchs of lousy lives, no better off in three and a half thousand square feet than the cantina oberero is on his single square foot. Malcolm pulled a classic stunt, costing me twelve hours in getting the last post out, the butthead. I go over, immediately after work, but he's already working on someone else's machine, and doesn't want to plug mine in because the Lotto is up to $150.000 Belize dollars and he's had a busy day sitting on his stool and raking in half the loot in town. When his bike was stolen from under my old house, he had a brand new one the next day, and I'm for sure the only person in town who would have done more than say Sorry `bout that. I even bought Sloggo from him, brand new. I dwell on it, not out of spite, at least, entirely, but because it so precisely emblematic of why the British both conquered and lost, and will keep losing until the meteor flag has the impact of a Botswanian tribal shield. The next day I found another shop who gladly let me plug in, so I know where I'll get my next machine when this one's rusted to dust. I might even buy one I don't need, because I doubt there's a stress factor much higher than 233,000 words sitting on a postage stamp of magnetic media which needs ten million transistors to function. The Outbox got balky, but Dean, my hero, knew its tricks, and everything went to New York in something like half an hour. Probably the happiest day of my life, with Samantha along for moral support. Finally ended up in bed, flat as a fritter, and let myself start recovering from 72 sleepless hour, thanks to the flu. I was at the keyboard at six this morning, relief palpable, almost to the extent of making me want to slack for the day, but no, haltingly, hesitantly I lay fingers to plastic, waiting for the tribe to get back in harness, and happy to be alive. Updating my computer-related adventures, my trusty old Proview monitor, four year veteran of you-name-it died on the Second, complete with immolation. It had been suffering from a cold solder joint for a couple of years, a malady I'd managed to fix with toothpicks several times, but the end was the end, smoke and flame defining `end' when it comes to computer monitors. Fortunately, the quarterly meager as it turned out to be, was enough to cover a new seventeen inch model, with which I am most pleased. I'm mentioning all this because I do have a significant criticism. Monitor controls. For home-use models, there should be none other then the on/off button. The extra circuitry is a, expensive, and, b, based on personal experience, likely to cause its own problems. No use of the controls improves the image quality, and, should you or some kid decide to experiment, it's unlikely you will ever get back the pixel-perfect, color perfect display set by the manufacturer. Let the small segment of the market who need sophisticated user access have it in expensive, brand name machines, but let the rest of us save money and have the most reliable product possible. Another note is the price. About $225 U.S., taxes and delivery included, here in the ultimate backwater (well, next to Mongolia, I guess). Terrific bargain, and the new one features .27mm dot pitch, a noticeable improvement over my .28 15" model. Also got a new keyboard, brand-name, ta-da; very crisp and quiet. Love it, and fear not, my old one is carefully stored awaiting its place in the Smithsonian. Dean says he gets 150 spams a day. Add the telemarketers, and thus is your First Amendment as interpreted by liberals. I think I'll just get off the Net, entirely. We pay by the hour and who in the world wants to spend several dollars a day just to learn about Low Mortgage Rates, assuming it isn't some virus, in the first place. Spammers should be caned Telemarketing, except by local concerns in their area of business, should be forbidden. These are basic, common-sense issues, and your ignoring of them, a, makes your life a living hell, and, b, portends nothing but nothing, with ever less the farther ahead you look. Or course, in a country that can't even get rid of the penny, because of the free speech issues of a special-interest splinter from southern Illinois, I guess anything to do with sense is fantasy, however it's sliced and diced. All that's left for you to do is cut capers, which is why I'm a humorist. Nice fit. If the shoe pinches, bear it. Lost my taste for tea. Where did that go? With the flu, I guess. Reminds me of entering the Army; I had some kind of low-grade infection that made milk taste metallic, all through basic. Talk about compounding a drag, but I still came in first on everything, including p.t. out of the whole training company (about 400 guys). I carried Metcalf in the last five miles returning from bivouac, then passed out the next day while we were cleaning our rifles. The clinic said walking pneumonia, but the drill still booted me as squad leader, though my poor replacement didn't have the nerve in his whole family to take over my bunk at the head of the stairs. Classic Army. Do a dozen good things -- for example, I wrote everything above the fold for my entire year as a journalist -- but forget to wear your steel pot to the field, even though you go in your private Huey, and they'll try to mess you up like a pack of yipping mongrels. They have mass Ivy League encounter sessions trying to figure out why every single last recruit detests everything to do with o.d. from their first week in the service, and no one will even mention the blistering nuisance of G.I-ing the mess hall. This occurs at 2:30 in the afternoon, and lasts for a deliberately arduous full hour. You've been on and working steadily since five, won't get off for six more hours, and they think it good for you to waste hundreds of gallons of water and pounds of soap in driving the poor cooks nuts by scrubbing an already spotless floor. Every day. The weird things of it was, I liked K.P., though I only had it twice, so, once again, they took a good kid and turned him bad, apparently, like my mother, just for the fun of bullying. The essential mystery is how so many people can waste so much time and energy, to say nothing of money, learning so little. The way I see it, they better change, hard and fast, because coming immediately down the road is a civic base so fat and out of shape, only one eighteen year old in twenty will be fit to serve, and half of them will have compatibility issues. Go Army. Literally. All an enemy has to do at this point is wait for us to defeat ourselves, and one can hardly help picturing the Chinese looking at our soldiers more as something to eat than someone to fight. On that yummy note I think we might do well to get Tina back on her feet. No more essays for a week, that's a promise, but all bets are off if I see Tyne Daley voyaging on the streets of Dangriga. "I think you're very handsome, Raul," the girl said as she crossed to stand in front of the cute teen. She sat between the boy and the man, looking up at the eighteen year old. He looked back down into her pretty brown eyes. "Thanks," he whispered, his accent soft American. "It's nice to tell stories when you first get to know each other," Tina suggested kindly. "It's kinda embarrassing," the boy replied in perfect English, with a shy smile. "What it really is, is complicated," the girl observed. "There are the boringly chaste whose only virtue is fidelity, and the round-heeled bimbo, who's about as interesting as the average sack of rice, so my dad, say. In between, there are all manner of fish, fowl, and folks, with only one practical way to make more. My mom and dad have both hired me out, and, though the first time it ended well, and this time is going to end well, that hardly covers the rest of my life, or even much of my childhood, come to think of it. So what do I think? Well, for openers, I don't have much interest in becoming a featured attraction in Boy's Town, your zona roja, nor do I want to spend all my time chasing paper-mache donkeys with a broomstick. The thought of lying still like a dutiful wife while my macho beer hound does it for three or four minutes, is least appealing of all. But somewhere there is a big, sane, middle ground where an educated and aware girl such as yours truly can share a few hours a week with the same kind of person she'd be happy dating for dinner and dancing. My challenge is to choose a handful of guys well enough that I'll never have to reject any of them. If I end up married to one, the others will still be close friends, and yes, as long as it totally does not interfere with my marriage, I will spend time alone with them, probably letting them father my kids if they want to. Flexible, but not loose, with one big caveat, and that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Not dwelling on it and going into voyeuristic details, necessarily, but not keeping secrets and refusing to share under some privacy code that has more to do with bathroom functions than bedroom activities. And the sharing starts on the first time, with the boy telling the girl every last tiny detail of his first time." "I was wearing brown shoelaces," Raul said. "Complicated, she what I mean?" the girl replied, "I'm bought for you, more or less by the hour, and come sit beside you with friendly feelings, but mostly glad mom will be able to get her shop, and we'll have stability during the times we live here in Mexico, then, boom, you turn out to be funny as well a cute." "You started it," Raul said, again with the shy smile. "Lord, I suppose I did at that," the ten year old sighed. "You set the tone," the boy elaborated, "just like you said, not sassy, but no odor of mothballs, either; it made me feel comfortable, or at least as much as I can be under the circumstances." "How did you feel your first time?" she asked, matching Raul's shy delivery. "Complicated would be a fit," the boy said. "Wouldn't it be gross if it weren't?" the girl said, "I mean, if you just went up to someone and said, `you look cool,' then found a bedroom?" "I guess it's like opera," the eighteen year old allowed, "wouldn't be much too it if some fat ladies just came out and sang for six or eight hours." "Adding a plot and scenery doesn't help much, as far as I can see, perhaps on account of my age," Tina replied, "but I'll have to admit it's better that a choral society, so observation accepted. A few trappings, a little pizzazz, moral highlights along with the tale, I suppose it all adds, but, still, it's hard to beat the nerves of a first performance." "I'm getting two," the boy remarked. "Lucky thing about that," the girl observed, "I mean, what if it was a sliding scale, each individual a little different than the other. There could, for example, be a waypoint with a sixty-forty, then a sixty-two / thirty-eight, and so on, for years of nerves, jitters, and psychic stress." "High adventure in low places," the boy affirmed, nodding at the pretty face looking up from his right side. "The opposite of mountain climbing, which is low adventure in high places." "It must fit low IQs," the boy mused. "That's probably the crucial factor to living a little outside the lines without scribbling all over the page," Tina said, "just plain being smart. Trouble is, half the people in jail think they're pretty smart, so I guess there's thinking smart and acting smart." "At least it's not a subject that has much to do with smarty pants," the Hispanic wit observed. "You're filling up half my list all by yourself, Raul," the girl said, "I came down here thinking I might have, you know, six or eight special friends. That seemed about right; bold and invigorating, without being everyman's toy; now you turn out to be worth about four normal guys, so my horizons are closing in and I'm getting all claustrophobic." She sighed with a nice little touch of feminine drama, wiping her brow as if fatigued by great mental exertion. "What's a girl to do?" "Why not write a handbook?" the teen suggested. "Call it `The Toy of Sex', base it on situations rather than positions." "You're not going to take up my whole lest, I'm not going to let you," the girl responded, rolling her pretty brown eyes. "I promised myself when I was twenty-five, if I wanted something sensational to read, I'd be like the lady in he play and turn to my diary. One boy, no matter how cute, no matter how smart, and no matter how literate is going to change that. I won't be petulant about anything else, but I will have my diary, I will, I will, I will." And yes, she stamped a small foot prettily, all of it, that is, that could reach the floor. "I meant diary when I said `handbook,'" Raul said. "His and Her chapters," Tina said, "with gentlemen allowing ladies to go second." "I was pretty young," the funny boy said, "so maybe we should think about a children's edition." His guests seemed to be getting acquainted without prompting, so Francisco took orders for lemonade and Coke, and adjourned to the kitchen, where, because it was Mexico, he made do with limes. He knew better than to ever, under any circumstances, substitute lemon for lime in a gin and tonic, the results are fatal to both drink and drinker, but in a cold drink with sugar and ice one was about the same as the other. Yes, he was grasping at mental straws, but the eighteen year old and the ten year old were a dizzying couple, and any temporary distraction from thinking about them together over the evening was welcome. Limeade and a Coke had they said? "How old?" Tina asked. "Just before my ninth birthday," Raul replied. "I'd just turned ten," the girl said, and they nodded to each other in acceptance. "Was it with one man, or more than one?" "Three," the boy said. They were sixteen. A cousin and two of his friends." "Were you alone with them for long?" the girl wanted to know. "Yes," the boy said, his honey-gold Latino skin coloring gently. "Did you know something was going to happen when they got you by yourself?" "They were talking about a place they used to ride their bikes. It was a grove of olive trees. They'd park and hide in the trees, then truck drivers would park there to sleep or eat. They kind of told me some of the things they saw were pretty mature, and I might not be interested, but I said I was, and they told my if I was sure, I could come with them into the woods because they were going to talk about it more where they were going to have privacy." "Did someone want an olive in their martini?" Francisco asked as he entered the living room with a tray of drinks. He half shook himself, then looked at the boy and girl on the wide leather sofa, "oops, sorry," he added, "my mind's been wandering this afternoon." "He was starting a story about an olive grove," Tina supplied, helpfully. "Then I haven't gone completely around the bend, after all," the older man mused, shaking his head with palpable relief. The kids sipped their drinks, and Francisco, finding he'd forgotten to serve himself, returned to the kitchen and fetched a beer. The boys had come together as English speakers, Armando, Raul's cousin meeting Angel and Juan at school, where their various American backgrounds had given them much in common. Added to this was the swim team, where all competed graciously, though, as they soon found out, they'd rather spend time in the library than churning laps and bubbles for the old alma matter. Their first ride to the roadside grove had left them tongue-tied and embarrassed, but the instant one of them had suggested returning, the other two had immediately signed on. The second venture had left them as the first had, and it was now Friday evening with a third trip planned for Saturday, mid-day. The subject of Raul had come up, Armando had supported his younger cousin, and by accord they agreed to include him if he was interested, figuring first to include him in the afternoon discussion they were planning so as to get the most out of their Saturday. None of them knew anything was going to happen, but the three older boys felt it, as did the nine year old the minute they entered the arroyo in back of their colonia. They walked for half a mile, branched onto a smaller dry river, and proceeded another hundred yards coming to rest at a growth of roots jutting from the bank of the arroyo. "Is this okay, Raul?" Armando asked, solicitous of his little cousin as Mexican children usually are of their younger colleagues, preferring, for some reason, mild friendliness over the ruthless cruelty their American cousins choose with its endless squabbling and adversarialism. "If god gets mad at you guys for teaching me stuff, and sends the rain, it might not be the best place," the nine year old observed, eyes sparkling with excitement. "I think we're in trouble, then," Angel said, "because if the great skyboy isn't pissed, he'll be weeping tears of joy." "Damned if we do and damned if we don't," Armando observed, smiling shyly at his own nonsense. Juan was the smallest and youngest of the sixteen year olds. "It didn't rain in the olive grove," he noted, and they all found his perspective helpful. "That means it must be safe even if we don't build a god-dam," Armando quipped. Whatever happened, it was going to be friendly, and, having settled the issue of divine inundation as best they could, they perched on the tangle of heavy roots and made themselves comfortable. There's a song with the phrase, "A kind of a hush...", so I don't like using it without attributing in, but, anyway, a kind of hush fell over Raul and the young teens. It continued for some minutes, toes in sandals circling in the sand of the dry riverbed. "Is this what they did?" Raul asked, rhetorically, every nerve of his young body clearly signaling that he knew better. His older friends giggled, shyly, and looked at him gratefully for breaking the ice. "They brought blankets into the grove," Juan said, "then the driver and the boy would lie down on them and they'd talk." "Were the kids nervous?" Raul asked. Armando looked at Angel and Juan who nodded in response. "It was the first time for one boy," he explained, "he was with his uncle, and they talked for quite awhile, while the man made sure the boy was ready, but Julio, he was eleven, was still pretty nervous when it started happening. The other boys were more excited than nervous, because everything they did was pretty simple, so there's not much to be nervous about, like there is in algebra, once you know about it." Again, two of the teens nodded at the words of the third. "How excited did the other boys get?" the young boy wanted to know. "One boy named Octavo took his shirt off before they even got into the grove," Angel replied, "then he piggybacked on the man he was with, and as soon as Diego, the man, lay him on the blanket, he started undoing his belt." "I know that feeling," Raul bespoke himself, shattering the marginal composure of his older friends into a fit of hiccupping giggles. "He wasn't going to pee," Armando managed to choke, careful that his tone, or what was left of it, didn't embarrass his little cousin, "he wanted to do big-boy stuff." "Oh," the tyke said. "That's okay," Juan responded, "a couple of times the boys did pee with the men, but Octavo was experienced, so he was taking his pants off to do mature things with Diego." "How about the boy who was really nervous?" Raul asked, "did he?" "Julio," Armando said, "with his uncle, Pius, yes, that's how they started." "Tell me about them, first," Raul suggested. "Okay," his older cousin said, as the four shifted positions to huddle more closely, "they came into the grove and Pius spread out a quilt. "You gotta go to the bathroom," the handsome twenty-four-year-old drivers asked his slim, eleven-year-old nephew. "Yes," Julio said, "just pee." "I do, too," the older male said, "you can go behind that tree or come behind this one, with me." "I want to come with you," the boy said, falling in step at his uncle's left flank for the short walk. "Do you have to go right away, or would you like to talk a little, first?" the man asked. "I can wait," the boy responded. "Okay," his uncle whispered softly, "because there's some things I need to tell you about life on the road. You may have figured some of it out on your own, but I want to be sure, okay?" "Yes," the boy whispered. "Because I don't even want to do this with you, take a leak, unless you know what's happening, because it's not the kind of thing all boys are interested in, and I don't want you to feel any pressure if you aren't interested. It's okay to be just two guys driving together, but it's a lot better if the man and the boy are special friends as well as being partners in the truck, so I want you to at least try, unless you're really against it." "I want to try, too," the boy said, his pre-teen voice low and husky. "Good," his uncle said, "then the first step might be to pee while we're naked; that gets the embarrassing part over doing what guys often do together." "Okay," the boy whispered, nodding his head, shyly. "Go under that tree and take off your clothes," the driver whispered, "you can stand close to the trunk if you're embarrassed, that way I won't see you until you're ready; plus, you can leave your underpants on, if you want." "Okay," the boy whispered back as his uncle took him gently by his slim shoulders and guided him close under a fifty-foot tree. "I won't peek," Diego said, "so tell me when you're ready, and I'll come and get you." "Will you be in your briefs, too?" Julio asked. "No," the man said. "Good," the boy replied, nervously, and they separated. "I've got my eyes closed, so tell me where you are," Diego said. "Still here under the tree," the boy replied. "I'm coming up behind you," the man said, "still with my eyes shut." "I'm still here," Julio said, his voice becoming a shaky whisper as he sensed the nearly naked young man close behind him. As the boys stared down from the thick tree, the young driver found his nephew, tracing his fingers down through the youth's shiny black hair to his long, honey-brown neck. "Still have my eyes closed," he whispered, "are you wearing your underpants?" "No," Julio husked. "I'm naked, too," the young man said, "so, when you're ready, you can push back against me. That way you can tell if you want to share the sleeper with me tonight without giving away any secrets." "I want to share it," the boy whispered raggedly. "I want that, too, very much," Diego said, pulling the naked child gently to him as he ran his fingers gently down the graceful neck and slowly out along the childish, undeveloped shoulders of the eleven year old. Slowly they came fully together, the tall, athletic male standing behind the slim, light brown boy, his big, strong hands softly roaming the boy's now-panting chest as he nuzzled his handsome nephew's neck. Julio, acting instinctively, both loving and trusting his young uncle, arched to the man's touch, spreading his legs while he slowly reached up behind him with both arms, linking his fingers behind Diego's neck. "Has this happened with you, before?" the uncle asked. "Keddy Renaldo has some pictures of a man teaching a boy," Julio replied, "this is how they were in the first picture that had them both naked." "Did you like looking at them?" the young man asked. "Yes," the boy said, "but we only got one chance. Keddy said if I went driving with you, maybe you'd teach me, so that's when I sent you the telegram." "How does it feel, compared to how you thought it would feel from looking at the pictures?" the older male wanted to know. "It's much more intense," the boy said in response, "more like lightning than something glowing and soft, like a candle." "I feels very intense, to me, too," Diego said, "you have a beautiful body and your skin is the softest thing I've ever felt in my whole life." "Have you done this with other boys?" Julio asked. "I've been waiting for you. Glad it was only a year. There's a lot of nice kids acting as co-drivers, cute ones, too, but I though there might be something really special between us, so it was worth taking a chance and waiting until you were old enough." "Did a man every do it with you when you were my age?" Julio said. "I missed out," Diego answered, "about half of boys have experiences like this, the other half learn with their girlfriends." "Is that better?" Julio asked. "On the whole, yes," the driver replied, "because, for example, I don't remember any men from being your age who I'd have wanted to teach me, and I sure knew plenty, I mean, they might have been nice, and all, that I didn't want to teach me, or do anything with beyond fooling around in a swimming pool. But I was just unlucky in that department, never happening to meet the right one; other boys did, and were very happy with what happened, and went on to have girlfriends, if they wanted, just like the boys like me, who never had anything happen." "Is like loving part of it?" the young reader asked. "No," Diego said, "not in a relationship like this. That is to say, you can enjoy it without loving your partner, or, you can have a partner you love, but don't want to do what we're doing with him, or anything in between. It's independent of love for male couples, and most mixed couples, too, but that isn't to say if two people happen to love each other, and happen to like what we're starting to do, that that isn't the best of all worlds." "It's kept the church alive for two thousand years," Julio observed. "Well spoken," his uncle responded, "and, cute as that group is, they switched Love onto the Madonna siding, so it wouldn't become an issue as the priests harvested among the parish cuties." "Well, Jesuits can't talk all the time," the boy remarked, "they have to scheme in the real world, once in awhile, otherwise, who'd pay attention to them?" "The sleek bodies of young boys have sustained enterprises from the church, to the world's best navies, to AOL," Diego said, "so it's understandable that considerable cleverness has come into play over the centuries, and, not only that, but the holding of our type of relationship as somehow deviant or profane, cripples any culture so bold in their ignorance. They get fat and die out, due to lack of interest." "Not overnight, I hope," the boy said, with a sagacious nod to the north. "Oh, no," Diego responded, "if a country's rich enough, it can live for a long time on nothing." "They have the perfect leadership for that," the boy said. "Their leadership is adamant when it comes to reporting its excellence, that has to be admitted," Diego added. "In the picture," Julio said, "the man had his hands lower down on the boy's belly." Nice change of subject. "Like this," the young drivers said, letting both hands caress the boy beneath his belly button. "Even more," Julio whispered. "You mean he was touching the boy the way a molester does?" Diego whispered. "Yes," the boy acknowledged, spreading his long, coltish legs more widely and thrusting his hips to meet the big hands of his tall, athletic uncle. Diego tightened the grip of his strong, left arm, finding the boy with his right hand, fondling him, to the child's hisses of welcome, then gently stroking back the eleven year old's foreskin, exposing his swollen, pink glans. "Are you looking at me?" Raul asked. "Not yet," his older partner whispered, "are you ready for me to open my eyes?" "Yes," the boy replied, "and I want to open mine, too. You feel really big and hot against my back," he added, "and I want to feel you against my stomach." Julio brought his hands down from behind his uncle's neck, turning toward him, eyes still shut, backing against the smooth trunk of the tree. He placed his hands up on Diego's powerful shoulders, and opened his eyes looking into the now open eyes of the young man towering a foot over him. "Hi," the both whispered softly, then looked down, hands now on each other's flanks as the boy pulled himself against his uncle's large adult penis. "It teaches you you can feel better than think," the boy said after some moments. "The more intense I think it's going to actually feel, the more wrong I am, because it feels ten times more than anything I could imagine." "That's because we're taking it slowly," the man responded, "that's the entire secret. Rushing diminishes everything to the point it's only super, a poor trade for beyond the ecstatic and ethereal " "Way beyond," the boy whispered in agreement, as the males slowly brought their penises together, thrusting gently to be sure they hadn't jumped to conclusions. "Will we do this a lot in the sleeper bunk?" the child asked. "I'm having a hard time imagining not doing it," the young teacher said. "Me, too," Julio whispered. "Do you want to try the quilt?" Diego asked. "Can I touch you, first?" the boy said. "Yes," the man husked, dropping his hands to his side as he spread his legs and thrust to the boy who was braced against the olive tree. Julio encircled the huge, jutting, circumcised shaft just under its purple, swollen head with the finger of his left hand and toyed with the bulging tip with his right hand, palming seminal fluid freely and rubbing experimentally, especially with his index finger against the momentarily anterior portion of the athlete's log-like, circumcised boner. The eleven year old experimented with stroking the man, transferring some of the slick seminal fluid to his left hand, and using both in a series of experiments. "We better change positions so I can lean against the tree," Diego managed to whisper, his chest heaving and his breath rasping from the young male's boyish touch. The child was neither aggressive nor hesitant, just perfect, and, though malice was the last thing he bore toward his nephew, he still wasn't going to stand for it. "Okay," he whispered up into the handsome face looking down at him, "I want to keep doing it." Slowly they turned, and, the instant the tall male's back was against the solid tree trunk, he spread his legs widely, again thrusting encouragingly to Julio. The man laced his fingers behind his neck, arched, and gave himself entirely to the beautiful, coltish pre-teen. Julio leaned to his uncle, his forehead against the heaving chest of the young man. He used both his hands with some surety now, setting up a firm, slow stroking as he stared down with huge brown eyes. "That's perfect," Diego whispered, "just don't stop when it starts happening." "What's going to happen?" Julio asked. "I'm going to cum," the teacher said, "I haven't done it for awhile so there will be a lot of thick, white fluid -- semen -- and if you hold me the way you are now it will get all over your face and chest when it starts happening." "If I was a girl it would go inside me, right?" the boy asked. "Girls do it the way we are, too," Diego replied, "they like to get it on their breasts, but usually, yes, the girl takes the seed inside her." "One of the pictures showed the little boy down on his knees taking the man in his mouth," Julio said. "That's a very popular way to do it, but it takes getting used to," Diego managed to whisper, his entire body now shaking at the instinctive touch of the boy leaning against his panting chest. "Can I try it with you tonight when we're in the sleeper?" Julio asked. "Yes, darling," the young man whispered, "I won't have so much sperm then, if you don't like having it on your tongue." "I think I'll like having it in my mouth," the boy whispered, shyly. "The best way to find out is to hold me against the tip of your tongue and your lips when I tell you I'm going to cum," the teacher explained, "then you'll see what it's like, and it will be easy to spit it all out if you don't like the feeling." "Okay," Julio said, fantasizing over the big, adult penis in his hands and what it would feel like surging gently in his mouth. Even as his thoughts turned carnal, Diego grew larger and hotter in a matter of seconds. His breathing became a hard pant and his whole body quaked as he spread his legs wide and thrust himself with short, fast strokes into the hands of the coltish boy who met him avidly with a hurried flurry of strong counterstrokes. "I'm cumming," Diego managed to whisper. Julio slowed his pace, instinctively using both hands hard and low on the stag, holding him tight against his slim, sweating chest so he could see everything. A thick pulse of heavy cum dashed against his neck. "Don't stop," the young man reminded the boy in a faltering whisper, and Julio kept his hands low and used them hard. More sperm came in a few moments, then there was a leaping torrent and hot stream after stream spread across the child's shoulders, slim chest, and tiny, golden nipples. "Oh, yes," the boy breathed, "oh, uncle." "It's really started now," the shaken man rasped, "you made it the best in the world." Nor was he kidding. He settled into a fast, hard rhythm in the child's gripping fists, covering him with his long, powerful climax. After nearly a minute, the boy detected the approaching end and settled on his long legs to his slightly knobby knees, finding the man with his lips and tongue, experimenting for a moment with the first hard pulse against his delicate orifice, then took the swollen, hot glans deeply and fully, moaning with the intensity of what was happening, but still vigorous in the use of his hands on the hard, long shaft of the young man. "Julio, I'm cumming," the adult warned a second time, his hands lowering to guide the boy free of the shattering climax building in the ruins of his loins. This just made the pre-teen use his hands and mouth more vigorously, so the young man gave up and just cradled the boy's sweet, Hispanic face in his hard, strong hands. Absently, on the verge of consciousness, Diego found the boy's long, slender throat with his finger tips, and was electrified to feel the hard contractions of the delicate muscles that followed each long, hard pulse of the fresh climax now spilling hotly into the soft, welcoming mouth as the boy hummed avidly with the intensity of a throat washed repeatedly by gush after gush of thick, salty sperm. Diego's second climax did not last as long as his first, and in half a minute Julio sensed the ebb of what was happening. He milked with his hands, licked with his tongue, and when the torrent has subsided, stood, leaning against his uncle's naked chest, staring up into his eyes. The adult lowered slowly to the boy, and they shared their first hot, salty kiss, thus extending the older male's ejaculation by ten minutes or more. "Love must have something to do with it being like that," Diego admitted as the couple regained their breaths, "but it's hard to tell. You're such a beauty and so good at touching, I can't imagine it being any other way with you, even if I'd met you ten minutes ago." "If the kissing was best, that might mean love, right?" the boy asked. "The kissing was great because it went on so long," Diego said, adding: "that makes it a calculus problem, and probably one way to demonstrate love is not to go there." "I would love it if you didn't," the boy agreed, and a moment later they were again kissing as if it were the last day on earth, slick naked body pressed to slick, naked body. Then Diego was gently breaking from the boy's hot, salty mouth and turning the coltish youth in his arms. He leaned whispering over Julio's right shoulder, encircling the boy's slim, wet chest with his left arm. "Spread you legs," he said, bracing against the tree so he could support the boy's weight. Julio complied, spreading wide, and the young teacher wet his right palm on the child's slick belly and began masturbating the pre-teen with a slow, steady rhythm. "Try to hold back and make it last;" Diego coached, "think about overbearingly matronic television actresses." "Mary Tyler Moore?" the boy whispered, raggedly, unable to keep himself from pumping his slim hips into the stroking, wet fist of the man behind him. "She's a dander queen when she wants to be," the teacher said in acknowledgement; "high-dudgeon, personified, but there is one who is worse; one with supernatural powers to rattle a young male at a hundred yards." "You mean so righteous she's worse than Rosie O'Donnell?" the boy asked. "To a young boy, maybe ten percent worse," Diego said. "Then I know who you mean," Julio responded. "Is it helping?" the young man asked. "Quite a bit," the boy said. "Good," his uncle whispered into his right ear, "because I really want this to last for you. This is where trust comes in, letting something immediate go, because it will be better for the waiting, far better." "I trust you, and trying not to think of her really works." "Can you feel your sperm?" Diego whispered, hoarsely. "It's getting really hot," the boy responded, nodding in his captor's arms. "Okay, pretend you've just torched one and your mother, played by a leading lady of the little screen, pounds through your door. Make up dialogue. Think of life in prison from slaying against living with the dragon. Whether you'd try to flee, or fake it out by pretending to be remorseful." "What if there was a lot of blood?" the boy asked. "That's the spirit," his uncle encouraged, "saw-tooth freezer knife, or keen steak blade, that kind of thing. Head first, or start with the limbs?" "Yes, yes," the boy seconded, "and what to do with the head. Pike the puppy on the front lawn, you know, go for insanity, or keep it fresh in the freezer for the forensic pathologist, you know, the next time they get together for darts." "To paint or not to paint," Diego added, "perhaps a discreet bull's-eye on the forehead." "Couldn't improve the eyes, though," the boy mused, happily. "About a half a toothpick under each lid before she goes in the plastic bag, that oughtta do the trick." "How long do you think she'd have to thaw before the darts would stick?" Julio asked. "Twenty minutes might work," the teacher suggested, loving the feeling of the giggling boy in his left arm as much as he did the more intense hotness of the child's long, hard penis in his massaging right hand. "Do you like the feeling of my cum on you?" Diego whispered. "Yes," the boy rasped back, stiffening with a jolt in the man's right hand. "I had an older boy's sperm on me the first time it happened," the teacher said, "and it made it really hard to stay in control." "It's hard for me, too," the boy affirmed. "You've got to try to think of other things besides spilling your seed," the uncle coaxed, "for example," he went on, "if I bend way over you, like this, and hold my left hand, palm up, like this, under your glans, and rub you gently, like this, you have to try not to think about what my palm will look like if you cum off on it. Understand?" "Am I meant to forget what happened on my chest, too?" the shaking boy asked. "Precisely," his uncle agreed, "as well as what might happen on your bare chest the first time you spend some time alone with your friend, Keddy." "So I shouldn't pretend it's his left hand cupped under me, like you are?" the boy wanted to know. "Yes," Diego agreed, "and if he was whispering to you, and kissing your beautiful shoulders, and urging you to cum, you'd have to just ignore all of it." "You've got to teach me how," Julio said. "Trust," the man responded, "trust a man for hours. Have faith that he wants your climax just as much as you do, that he won't leave you or let you down, that in his own way, in his own time, he'll go all the way with you, and that you'll cum in his hands or in his mouth." "I trust you," the child whispered. "Then go ahead," Diego whispered, "let it happen, and it will happen again after we've had lunch and a nap, okay?" "Yes," the boy whispered in panting, ragged response. The males remained huddled, man over boy, for long moments as Diego masturbated the pre-teen with his right hand, cupping his left at the boy's swollen tip. "I'm cumming," the coltish youth finally whispered, staring down at his waist. Diego shifted so he could see everything, freezing his right hand at the boy's rigid base, holding him almost still against his ready left hand. The boy shuddered, hissed and gasped for half a minute, whispering, "oh, god," just as the first spray of his long climax filled his uncles hand. He kept looking down and kept ejaculating for almost a minute, filling the big worker's hand of his scholarly uncle until his thin, watery semen overflowed and sheeted down over his long, hairless legs. The males sank to the ground at the base of the tree. "You okay?" Diego whispered. "I think so," the boy said. "I mean psychologically," the man said, "sometimes you feel disassociated after you ejaculate; you know, cold and detached; maybe even angry or guilty." "I just can't believe it was so intense," the boy said, still panting but regaining his breath quickly. "I want to spread your sperm on your chest," Diego said, "but I don't have to if you're not ready for it." "I want to feel it," the boy whispered. "It will delay lunch," the man observed. "The food will keep," the boy said, and that answered that. "Let's tell the next one in our underpants, okay?" Armando suggested, looking at his young cousin, who nodded alertly. That was a good enough signal, and the boys stood up from their nest of thick roots and self-consciously disrobed, hanging their jerseys and shorts out of the way. They turned slowly to face each other, heads bent as they stared down at the big, openly displayed bulges in their white cotton briefs. Nervously, Armando brought Raul to his lap, Angel on his right, leg touching, as was Juan's, who perched at his left hip. "Octavo and Pius," the attentive nine year old whispered, inspiring the next story, greatly enhanced by watching Armando begin to molest the little boy in his underpants. Last seen, Octavo had dropped onto the quilt carried into the grove by his uncle. Already bare-chested, the handsome, slightly pudgy twelve year old was arching his back and unbuckling the belt of his shorts. Pius, a six-four, rangy giant, age twenty-five, quickly stripped naked, tossing his clothes on a branch, then standing at the boy's feet, his long athletic legs slightly spread, display for the boy on the quilt by arching his back and placing his hands behind his neck. The man's uncircumcised penis jutted nearly seven hot, hard inches from his powerful trunk of a waist. Like the boy staring up at him, he was a few scant pounds overweight, but the excess went well with his matted-hair physique, and to the boys in the tree as well as the boys on the ground, he looked like a stunning great male animal on the verge of taking total satisfaction. Although half-stupefied by the sight above him, Octavo's hands remained busy at his waist, and he finally managed buckle, snap, and zipper as Pius sand to his knees between the boy's now widely spread legs. The driver bent to his young helper, finding his lips and kissing him gently. "Have you been with lot of men?" the driver asked. "Yes," the boy said. "Are you going to stay with me on the truck?" the man asked. "Yes," the boy grinned, "I love it. It's perfect, noisy, but perfect, and I think you're awesome, even when you have your clothes on. Do you want me to stay?" "Yes," the man replied, immediately, "and I'm glad you're experienced, as long as you don't overdo it while we're meant to be out making money together." "It was all with one group of men," Octavo said, "I'm not attracted to the average guy in average circumstances, just once in awhile, and no one like you, ever. I'll be there when you need me. We had six tom cats when I was growing up, and they all wandered off to die of passion. Not my idea of a good time." "Good," Pius said, "because I want this to happen for you with others, but keeping everything ahead of the game on the road requires diligence in handling things before you have to cope with them, and sometimes that doesn't fit too well with down time." "Rubber, road, rest," the boy said, happily. "The first two are always most of the game, and rest, in terms of sleep, is pretty much the rest of the game, but, every few days, there's likely to be a few hours when everything's kosher and it's time to be together." "I can't say I'm on the same page," Octavo said, "because I don't know, from two days, all that's on it, but I like it and I'll try. `Glass, glass, and glass, no one rides for free, because there's bugs, bugs, bugs, and the driver has to see." "Well," the man chuckled, "with you riding shotgun, I hardly think I'll be looking out through all those sparkling clean windows, but it's a nice thought." Pius rose to his knees, his long Indian braids trailing over his shoulders like a brave in an expensive Western. His hard, Bronsonesque face softened as his long, strong arms found Octavo's soft waist and he gently skinned down the boy's shorts and underpants, exposing the twelve year old's fully adult, circumcised penis with its faint ridge of dusty-blond growth. The man looked wonderingly into the child's eyes. "I think it's from being with so many adult males at the pool," he whispered. "One of them was a doctor, and he said this might be the result of being mature with them." "You're beautiful," the man whispered, "I'd have been happy if you hadn't developed at all, you're cute enough to get away with pulling a stunt like that, but you're like an eighteen year old. It's very sexy." "Thanks," the boy said, with a shy smile, "but it would probably be embarrassing if I was still in school." "You'd be invited for overnights by half the kids in the gym class," the man said, "and they'd get you pretty used to letting them look at you. And that's not even allowing for what would happen when the girls found out." "I'm glad I left," Octavo said, "they interfered something wicked with my reading." "That's the one thing you can do in the cab of a truck," Pius said, "knit or read. You can sit over there and have a law degree, if you want, before you're old enough to drive the witless truck." "I guess that's how we chose each other," the boy mused, softly, "I saw your library, and you saw me looking at it." "I recognized the hunger, yes," Pius said, "was overbearingly affected by it when I was your age." "I've been reading so much since you hired me, I never thought to even ask," the boy said, "wipe the glass, follow along on the map, check the tires, and read while we're cruising. Wasn't put here for anything else, so no reason not to." "You're lucky you don't get motion sickness," Pius observed. "I do a little, but before I was too embarrassed to talk," the boy said, so I just let my eyes drift, or looked around a little. I was really scared you'd find out I'd been with the men on the water polo team and think I was a freak; also, that you wouldn't want to touch me, even though I know most of the drivers touch the boys they're with." "Two bridges crossed, then," the man whispered as his fingers trailed to the eraser-size nipples of the boy. "I would have been happy even if this hadn't happened," the boy said, "but I'm glad it is." "Same here," the man agreed. "In fact, I liked it that you were so quiet. It's nice to talk, but you can always judge a relationship on how you feel when there's nothing to say for the moment; how you feel just being close. That's either positive or negative, and all the talk there is won't change it." "I'd just look over to be sure you were still there, as if I couldn't believe it, then go back to feeling very positive," Octavo said. "As in happy?" the man quizzed, with a smile. "At least a thousand clams worth," the boy responded, "and that was then. They all had kids, so by now it's ten thousand, and, when you put your hands really low on me, - like that - , its really, really more." "Nice, salty clams," Pius whispered, "having juicy young babies by the thousands and thousands." "Then how come they want to go?" the boy asked. "Because they know I love you and they want to show off," Pius whispered to the happy kid. "Do they ever," the twelve year old agreed. "And they will, even more, later," the young man said, moving his hands back up over the boy's soft, smooth belly, then falling to his left on the quilt, molesting they boy with his right hand as he kissed the child's right ear and whispered to him. "Were you shocked the first time?" he asked. "Kinda," the boy replied. "Most men like to quiz boys about their experiences," the driver said, "but if it's private, that's cool, too." "I just didn't know how much there'd be," Octavo said, "I though sperm was like a few drops. Wrong." "Athletes probably have more than most guys," Pius observed. "It turned out they'd all been not doing anything for a few days before we got together." "You knew something was going to happen?" Pius asked his young assistant. "Brado was the team captain," the youth explained, "he said they wanted me for a towel boy, but he said the guys on the team liked to do mature stuff in the locker room after everyone else had gone, and some boys didn't like that kind of thing." "How did that make you feel?" Pius asked. "Really scared, but I knew lots of boys are scared, even if they learn with their girlfriends, so I said I wanted to learn stuff, and I liked them, and wanted to be part of the polo team, even if it was only helping out. I mean, I guess that's pretty obvious; that I wasn't going to become lead scorer or defensive star." Pius laughed at the boy. "How did they ever let you go?" he asked. "It was too many to be one-on-one with," the boy said, "I mean, it wasn't like a game, they were nice, and they were serious, but something was missing. None of them liked to read, and to me that was everything. Anyway, it was all buddies and no lovers, if that makes any sense, and it doesn't, because I don't want a man for a lover, that's almost gross, with so many girls running around, but I wanted more than scores and bets, so I found a boy who the other kids said was jealous of me, then I talked to him and kind of hinted at what happened, and he stopped being jealous in no seconds and was suddenly the best friend I ever had in my whole life, and his whole live, his name's Alfonso, and I introduced him to Brado, and he stayed after with us one night, and they said he could take my place, and they threw a banquet for me, and I retired from polo, age, eleven, to seek my fortune on the open roads of Mexico, with ten thousand U.S. dollars sewed into my clothes, and about six phone number to call if things went wrong." "Are you having fun, yet?" the man asked with a twinkle in his eyes. "Seventh Heaven is yesterday's news," the boy chortled, nuzzling into the rugged neck of the tall man who was holding him in his left arm and molesting him openly with the fingers of his right hand. For long moments neither spoke as they experimented with kissing. "It's my first time for this," the boy whispered, "I let the polo players cum on me, and in my mouth a few times, but I've never been kissed before." "Did you like it?" Pius quizzed, his voice a hoarse, throaty whisper. "Yes," the boy responded, "which was lucky, because they had me on the massage table for a long time." "And there was a lot of cum?" "They all knelt between my legs while other players held them apart, and they put some gel on my right hand and taught me how to hold an adult, and what to do with my left hand while I was jerking him off. I guess I did it okay, that's why they got me so wet." "Did you get sperm in your mouth?" the man rasped. "All over my face and neck," the boy replied, "everywhere." "Did it stay exciting, or did you start to get bored," Pius asked the child purring happily in his arms. "I stayed exciting because Brado was really good using his wet hand on me. He kept me excited, but it probably would have been even if he hadn't been doing what he was with me." "Hmm," the driver mused, "I've never met anyone who had quite such a dramatic first experience, and I was just wondering like how much of that kind of thing would be too much, turn a kid off." "Much more would have," the boy remarked. "There were fourteen of them, counting reserve players and coaches. One or two more might have been okay, but you're right, it could have been a drag if much more went on." "Not mentioning the happy fact you might have drowned," Pius said, with a soft laugh. "I came a lot closer to that when you kissed me," the bright-eyed child said. "It was barely survivable, so it must have made us a lot stronger," the man replied. "Speaking of surviving," the boy said, "there's something I want to tell you." "You have five diseases plus you're a leper," Pius quipped, "I knew this was to good to ask. At least I'll die happy." "I want you inside me," the boy whispered, changing the tone of the conversation dramatically. "Not me," the tall athlete said, "I want to love you, not damage you." "Then use self-control," the boy suggested, "because I really want it to happen that way, no matter what." "Have you ever had a male inside you?" Pius asked. "Brado thought it would be a good idea in case I was ever with a man who wanted to rape me, so I'd be a little used to it, so he helped Alfredo mount me from in back, but he wore a condom so it wouldn't really be my first time." "Was it okay?" Pius wanted to know. "I liked him, Alfredo, a lot better, afterwards," the boy replied, "he was really gentle and made it feel nice after I got used to it." "How many times did he take you that way?" the man asked. "Six times, so that it was comfortable. That's when I left the team," the boy said. "How big was Alfonso?" Pius queried. "I was afraid you'd ask," the boy said, his laughter getting shier and more personal as he let himself be captivated by his tall, strong new partner. "Sorry," the man said. "No," the boy responded, quickly, "it's okay. He was big for his age, but not the size of a man; I just didn't want the fact he wasn't adult size to make you think I was some delicate virgin. I'm not, exactly, and I know it will hurt at first, and I know we can't do it more than once a month, that way, because of what the doctor on the team told me, but I still want it to happen. I'm not into girl stuff, by and large, but I do want to have that experience. To know once in awhile your seed is swimming in me, even if its not exactly Mother Nature's plan A." "I think it would be better to find an older boy and I can hold the two of your bodies together, the way Brado did, and we can kiss and you can fantasize a little to fill in the gaps." "I dunno," the boy whispered. "If you were wet from him, it would be easier for both of us," the man explained. "And I'd go around starry-eyed from almost half a billion sperm wiggling in me," the boy giggled. "Not for long, I hope" the driver observed. "Don't worry," the boy replied softly and contentedly, "I won't be showing up in frilly blouses and purple hair." "Actually," the man mused, "we could play games like that once in awhile; I'd love to ravish you as a knock-kneed schoolgirl, say, two or three times a year." "I like the sound of `year'," the boy responded. "So do I," the man said, "as well as a companion who walks without limping from strained anal muscles, or has to wear diapers because he's lost muscle tone where a boy doesn't want to lose it." "Dr. Palacio told me about that," Octavo said, "but he also said boys are pretty resilient, so that once in awhile wouldn't have any permanent effect." "I still like my way, just to be on the safe side," the man said, "and there are plenty of clean boys out there who would be happy to be part of us being together." "Have you molested other boys who drove with you?" Octavo asked. "Yes," Pius said, "I've had three assistants in six years. They're all teenagers now, and they've all gone back to school because they weren't especially hot on reading, so they needed maths grades." "Sometimes I think I like to read just so I won't have to take algebra," the boy said. "Then we're peas in a pod," the man laughed, "I was too lazy to strain my brain in pursuit of `X', myself." "I'll bet it takes lots of equations to equal one chapter of a good book," the boy responded. "Maths are for the outer life," the adult said, "reading, your real, what-you-are inner life. If you want to be rich, master every number in symbol you can get your hands on, however atrociously they teach it, if you want to be happy, leave the math to your better endowed schoolmates, and read until you're half blind. You can still be a janitor, a watchman, or a trucker; cook, something menial that doesn't interfere with your mind." "What about journalist?" the boy asked. "Last on the list," Pius replied, "if you want to write, keep your pencil in your pocket until you're forty years old, then write fiction. If you dabble in journalism along the way, a, who cares, if you don't write it, the guy at the next desk will, and, b, you'll bleed off your talent, should it happen that you have any, and end up with writer's block. You have, so to speak, build a huge reservoir and fill it right to the top before you go tampering with any of the shiny valves." "Your basic long-haul," the boy mused. "And how," the man affirmed, "but when you get there, you're able to do something only a handful of artists on the entire planet are able to do. Write snortin' good fiction. I've got fifteen years to go, myself, but I wouldn't care if it was fifty, well, twenty. I know someday I'll write at least a good story, maybe even a good book. If there's a higher reward than that in the world, I'd like to know about it." "But what if you do?" the boy asked. "I mean, there's that saying about what happens if you catch what you wish for." "It may turn out to be the dog cornering the tiger," the man said with a nod, "but what's the alternative? Grind away to raise a family? In this day and age, when half the kids turn out to be loutish American-style pizza hounds? I think not, and, besides, plenty of people seem to be thus engaged, last time I looked. Better the artist's alternative for at least some of us. Remember we, as wanna-be writers, are like the little sea turtles hatched on the beach; it takes a thousand to yield one. Nature's particularly tough that way, and if you survive that mother, there are the publishers in New York. No one has toyed with them from the time of Guttenberg." "Someone has to take socialism seriously or it would be smothered by its own kindergarten inanity," the boy said. "We are going to get along fiercely well," Pius said, then found the willing mouth of the naked twelve year old. For half an hour they lay side by side, nose to nose, kissing and whispering inaudibly. The boys looking down from the tree didn't get bored, both the young males were too huge and swollen to engender anything other than near-panic excitement. From their first experience, the week before, they'd learned to carry canteens on their spy missions and quietly passed one between themselves as they waited for the second act on the clean, blue quilt beneath them. Great artists produce huge amounts of work, but they are not always completely reliable. For example, I promised a week until my next essay, and it's only been a day. Well, I'm just coming off the flue, plus, I'm after the final inch on my diet, plus writing fiction is -- all together -- no walk in the park, so, no week. It's sort of like shifting into third gear, assuming four to start with, going up a long hill. Slower pace, less strain, let that big, throbbing mill cool down, and, if worse comes to worse, suggest to the reader that he could probably use a drink of water, too, and let it go at that. It's been a long time since I apologized for typos and the like. I've reached the point where I don't edit my work, at all. This helps in lots of ways but does mean a blotted copybook. I'm probably being defeatist. I realized, before I was accepted, I'd never make it through college because I couldn't spell with any special fervor, and they knocked off a letter grade for every alphanumeric blunder. Instead of trying harder, I bought a very used bike called a Honda Dream, like a Harley on whatever the opposite of steroids are, and toured the southeaster Iowa countryside instead of having long, intimate sessions with my dictionary. This freedom was greatly enhanced by the fact there was no way I was going to get through maths-course one, so the degree was a lost cause from my first day in a beanie. I violated my own rule on journalism and wrote for the paper, did all the photography on campus, worked in the library, rode my bike ceaselessly, and copped an A+ [knew I'd use that nuisance key once in my life] in an English seminar, and split for home half way through my fourth semester. I don't remember what happened to the bike, just that I got my $150 worth out of it. And yes, I was very lucky to survive, but any writer is lucky to survive. Where do they tell you that? If you're going to have anything to write about, you have to do what the others in the elevator don't do, and it can be fatal in more ways than one. Turtles on the wide, sandy beach, and it's a long swim to the dangerous waters surrounding Manhattan Island, assuming you survive the boring reaches of Long Island Sound, in the first place. And yes, for you geographers, one could approach from the southeast, but at what peril? The coast of New Jersey. Trump and the gang. Better to swim around Orient and Montauk points and risk the barge traffic and Hell's Gate. After all, it's not as if I was swimming to warm shores and friendly climes. They should not be toyed with, but I'm a king and toy with whomsoever I wish. Of course, this assumes freedom of speech relative to their being able to toy back. Good, that's why the whole process was invented, in the first place. I spanked a child last week, I'd almost say for the first time in my life. I think her name's Naneen. She's two, and quite likeable, but this is one gray wolf you whine around at peril to your bottom, and she whined. Whining, squabbling with her brother, or abusing the cats all get immediate, hard spankings, or, actually, for the English among us, spank. Lots of tears, then she sat in Samantha's lap saying, without a trace of whine, "I don't want to come here," repeatedly until the subject lost interest. She's been back twice, cute through and through, but, at her tender age, a refresher is probably in the future if she keeps visiting. That the idiotic reality of spanking. Do it once, and children respect and respond to an edge in your voice. The replacement under trendy liberalism is counting, either up or down, then nothing happens. The kids do not respect you, run amok, and, if you're human, there's a pretty good chance you'll end up mauling them out of pure frustration. Spankings are for whining, squabbling, or bad acting out, especially with pets. A slap, with all the strength you have, is for spitting, throwing sand, cursing, or other grossly egregious behavior. Neither should be followed immediately by any form of hug or modifying behavior. It hurts to be bad. The message is entire unto itself. I don't like liberals, at all, so it's not perverse of me to delight in the misery the bring down on their heads with counting and meaningful dialogues, leaving the old-fashioned spanking to the trogs and knuckle draggers of ages gone by. Do it early, do it hard, and chances are you'll rarely, if ever, have to do it again. The dividend is a responsive, not a subservient, child, and one you can take a hundred places you can't take an odorous horror show (the library, for example). It's becoming pretty obvious to me that I must be about the number one word-processor user in the world over the last three years, having published some million words and written twice that many, in addition. I constantly give the machine credit for everything I am in the writing department, but I do have a suggestion. The word processor should come with a Writer's option on the keyboard settings. This would reverse the hyphen and plus-sign key (+=) which a writer rarely uses but constantly hits instead of the oft'-used hyphen. Also, the F10 key should be disabled, as it frequently gets hit by mistake. The insert key should be muted; I've never used it in my life, but am constantly changing modes accidentally, and the Windows key under the right shift key is also a problem. Finally, my new keyboard has a key just left of the enter key, a vertical and front slash, that should defiantly be elsewhere, with the quote key next to the return. I suppose a tiny program would do the trick, but it would take a year to learn how to apply it, then I'd have to learn to write code. I'd rather date Tyne Daley. Moving along, I've lost my second big male cat, a beautiful, coal black beast half-again as big as the average feline. They just wander off. You'd think they'd turn up to eat, but I guess the tropics are crawling with food. Maybe things would be different if I could afford Tender Vitals for every meal, but I doubt it. I premium Purina doesn't fill the bill, they they'll have to take their board elsewhere, as it's a sin to have pets in a hungry country, in the first place. For the first time in years, I'm without a single remote. I gave my stereo to Samantha because she's been such a trouper over Daisy's gang moving in, and I seem have less desire to know what's going on in Israel with each passing week, so no television in the offing, and not a blessed remote, good batteries or bad, in the whole six-bedroom palace. Cool, or what. No telephone, no cable, I'll have my million words half in the bag by my birthday on March first. I wish I missed some of it. I mean, go figure, so many years so totally middle-American, and now I might as well be living on a remote island off Fiji, one with electricity, that is. In fact, my cup runneth over now that I no longer have to deal with Malcolm to upload, though, to be fair he's apologized for turning me away every time I've seen him. Hmm. Samantha is meant to turn up this (Sunday) afternoon to make chicken and mushroom soup. I tried yesterday, but learned you do not keep chicken three days in the fridge, so Queenie bought a new bird, and now her royal rock-and-roller is meant to steam the bird, pick the meat, and watch me do everything else. Two p.m., and I'm hungry. Not only am I hungry, but the last inch is gone, gone, gone. I have to push my stomach out to get to thirty-two inches, where I used to pull it in. Time to eat. Bill Anderson wrote to say he thought a recent attack of shingles suffered by my father was caused by my relationship with the little black girl, aka, Samantha. I hope so. My father made sure I toured every ring of hell as a boy, and if his prejudice gives him hives, heebie-jeebies, and a case of the freaking fits, well and good. I did my best to off my mother in vengeance for her extremes of derogatory behavior toward me, if there's any justice in the world, my wife is getting her comeuppance, along with the fee snapper for whom she ditched both her career, and me; my sister and next oldest brother surely deserve to have their dirty linen aired as publicly as possible, and, if my father's getting his turn, again, there are lots of forms of justice out there, and he deserves several of them. A writer leads a hard life. He must be compliant, or even wishy-washy; a sponge, absorbing, rather than a man fighting back. As a writer you can't stand up for this, or believe absolutely in that. I mean you might pull it off if you have a talent for commercial fiction, and can stomach dealing with New York, but you'll never be an artist of he written word, you have too much to learn, and you learn very little being boss and big shot, and micro-managing things so they happen the way you want. You sit there and absorb it all, realize how much of it is bad, shrug your shoulders at the notion of how long it's going to take to find enough good, and another day dawns, times about thirty years. The wine stays in the barrel until its time, it doesn't go running around being beer. If my parents had wanted me to have a healthy career in the mid social strata, which is what they said, they should have provided the extras, and all I ever got was endless bouts of seasickness, which meant I couldn't read, in a noisy, smelly fiberglass boat. My father, the opposite of a scholar, was placed on the front door of, a, The Fenn School, b, Concord Academy, which took boys in his era, and, c, Belmont Hill, with his brothers attending, having been placed on the front steps, d, Harvard, while he was set on the doorstep of Mass. Maritime. I didn't even get to go to the Northport schools, but was bussed, literally, across the tracks to East Northport, where my clever New England ways went over like the proverbial lead balloon. Yes, it all combined to make me a sensational writer, but it was less fun than you can possibly imagine. I saved a number of lives by developing a savage sense of humor, the blacker the better, and abiding. Pretty funny, eh? Of course, such parental and spousal indifference also licensed me to write pornography, and I don't take that as an incidental gift. Indeed, the very thought of a cute seven year old jumping in my lap and saying, "What are you writing, Daddy," is enough to chill my blood. Of course, I probably could have used my skills to turn out a precious children's book, or two, with a smiling wife at my side to illustrate them, but she went land-mad and dumped me for the lawyer's income potential, which is nothing if not ironic, because I could take my pick of several New England homesteads to settle into, and I don't mean tract-house cob jobs with loud, drinking neighbors. So is the life of a sponge, and all he can hope for is gathering in enough water to rain on a few parades under the assumption that those who rained on his must favor this particular behavior model. Of course, I could be wrong, they might not like receiving what they so generously supplied, which is, I suppose, why the phrase, "Tough luck," came into popular usage. And it doesn't take much embellishment to hold society, at large, responsible, either. You can't do calculus, therefore you can't teach history. That was their moronic message, and, to this day, I'm not qualified to teach fourth grade in any school in the U.S.A. Because I couldn't spell like a clever Jew, I was deemed an intellectual zero, not worth a degree of any kind from any where. Then they put me on K.P., assuming, with a logic that would be terrifying in the hands of a military mind, that it was a good place for a sponge. You know something? In my entire fifty-six years, no one has ever asked my how many books I've read. Doesn't that about say it all, vis-a-vis the intellectual climate in the post J.D. Salinger era? I was a fish in a sea of morons; yes, I found them distasteful, but I ate, anyway, kidded around so no one would end up toe-tagged, and, again, abided, not a drop of beer in my veins, just blue Yankee blood, aged and distilled to perfection. Somewhere along the line, the gods get involved, but they're all tripping on their egos to such a degree an end-run is just logging a few miles around them, rather than tampering with them on their well-packed turf. Samantha's in the kitchen in a devastating pair of dark-mustard colored short shorts and white girl's tee top. She's chopping an onion about as fast as a whale circles the earth, good, I'll buy her a bushel. My father's been hound-dogging a girl thirty years his junior for years; a poundage queen, to my eye, but she plays the harp. My mother tolerated it with the good nature only indifference can bring to such a situation, so, all in all, I don't toss guiltily at night over my relationship. The man has two point seven-five million, not counting land, personal accounts, and who knows what in the way of tractors and machinery; his eldest son is the greatest artist of all time; he stays fit and has enjoyed pretty darn good health, and he's worried about dip of the tar brush. Good. That's what bigots should do, fret until their skin falls off. You have to be smart to be happy, and you have to read to be smart, and the fact that opulent times have muted this imperative does nothing to detract from its essential truth. Learned something about reading instructions, yesterday. I have a sleep switch on my new keyboard and I was trying it out. It shuts the new monitor down, but it comes back on. I fiddled with it a few times, then read the instructions. They say do not degauss the display more frequently than every twenty minutes, and that it degausses automatically every time it's turned on or comes back to display mode from sleep mode. Oops. Doesn't seem to have done any time. Also a minor annoyance, in that it has a bright green light that flashes aggressively when the unit is in sleep mode. It seems to me the main reason you put a monitor to sleep, in the first place, is so it won't distract you, and a flashing green neon light is nothing but distracting. As much as an art as it is, it surprised me how much craft is involved in writing. The right keyboard and display make a world of difference, at least to me; back lighted, no glares, every `T' crossed and `I' dotted in the comfort and convenience department, and it's ten thousand words a day. If anything's awry, the production can easily fall to zero. Fellow writers take note, the muses are vague and illusive creatures, and only play happily all day and half the night if everything is in apple-pie order, weed, cigarettes, lighter, cats fed and watered, kitchen clean, food in the fridge for the gang, toilet clean, and enough on the B-list to provide a dozen excuses not to sit still and wait for the furballs from lit. land to cast their magic spell. My big black cat is back after being AWOL for three days. Seems to be in perfect shape. Again, I'll try to keep him in, but, in my considerable experience, when a cat really wants to get out, out it gets. I should name him Tom, because he wanders around the house talking to himself, as I'm prone to do. Why he leaves, with three obviously receptive young females after his body most of the time, is one of those mysteries of the wild kingdom. Of course, I like to wander around in the tropics, too, so maybe it's as simple as that. No sex for weeks. I go for my share of laughs at the expense of my subjects, king that I am, but I do so always aware that a porn master who's not getting any has to be worth a laugh or two, himself. On the other hand, I'm seeing more of Randy who's just leaving the twinkie stage, and he seems to like being alone with me and stretching out on the bed to play pool, so that's on the back burner. Samantha's become such a freaking friend and buddy, I hardly dare touch her, anymore, but she gives every sign that when she's ready, she'll be ever-so ready, and it would be hard to ask for more than that. I do not consider myself bisexual, because I wouldn't want to sleep with Randy, Daryl, or any male cutie more than two or three times, while I'd like to sleep with Samantha all night, every night. I like to play sex games with young males, and think it ever so cool when they share the desire, but that's it; no p.d.a., no romantic Erasmus (if I got that right) stuff of any kind, and my catamite friend turns me off because I turn him on. I'd rather chase a poof down the street with a stick, than be one, so I don't know where I fit. IQs of four-hundred live in their own separate world, and it's kind of scary, because if I can't figure it out, for sure, no one else is going to. Guess I'm a macho-half-macho man, or, more to my liking, a macho-and-a-half man. The Greeks had it about right. Why do we keep their ludicrous concepts of democracy and republicanism, and get all derisive about their mores? Could it be because we're becoming a real, fat, dumb, ugly, ignorant culture? The chicken soup, with which Samantha helped by chopping two onions and two potatoes, turned out nicely. In the past I've used the juice from the canned mushrooms and vegetables, but these seem too harsh, so now it's just milk, margarine, and flour for the base, with skimmed chicken stock, just because I have it. Lighter flavor, better aftertaste, but it's still missing something, possibly msg, which does enhance flavor, or garlic, which the girls say they don't like. Delicious but not quite delectable. Something to work on for the new year, as if finishing this million-word colossus won't be enough to keep my little fingers up to plenty of mischief. As do most egomaniacs, I carry on fantasy interviews with myself, and a question that always comes up is consistency. Other artists have achieved great moments, and, in "The Gods Must be Crazy," Jamie Uys sustains a genius level through most of the film, but, overall, it's the rarest thing, and so many high-fliers have turned out -- and published -- trunk-quality pap. Irving Berlin would be a perfect example. How, if you can achieve something great, can you ever do less? Or at least allow `less' to be published? Sure the typos and other errors creep in, but nothing I post is less than screaming, top of the list, absolute, A-plus, quality. I've attributed this to laziness, elsewhere, but can the answer be that simple? I thought I was being at least partly facetious, and figured my readers took me for just plain nuts. Yet, there it is, page after page, one huge chapter after another, one huge novel after another, half of them written with me typing flat out, never blocking, but sometimes choking. No one else even comes close, and most have gaps in it least some of their work, you could drive a truck through. Why, I'll admit, arguably, did all the literary talent on earth go to one individual? Yes, I worked and suffered for it, yes, it's been the very definition of an obsessive compulsion since Gran read me "Out Jumped Boo", when I was probably a year or two old, but that still doesn't count for it. Many have had several times my alleged enrichment, and most can't write at all, however they may wish the idyllic lifestyle, and, if the gods are with you, immortality. Of course being a king and killing out the gods had to help, but that kind of stuff only appears in the essays. The novels stand by themselves, and would suffer not a whit if every non-fiction word were removed. The essays, standing alone, would require a finer mood of the reader, but, of and by themselves, expand and open the art of saying simple things so beautifully the reader finds added beauty in his or her simple things. It's so hard to do, it's actually impossible, but it's impossible for a bumble-bee to fly, or for a lizard to jump onto a ceiling, chasing a housefly who's landed upside-down, so I guess it boils down to gods having their definition of impossible, kings having another, and the human race defining it for themselves. Van Gogh wrote voluminously to his brother in Paris, but he apparently doesn't shed much light, or any beyond the turmoil of his clouds, which would seem to make the letters unnecessary. I'm not heavily into the biographies of other artists; naturally, I assume there are not other artists, rather, lucky craftsmen, and a very few women, who caught a lucky break and fit a public fancy. To be an artist means to never publish anything inferior, one freaking inch beneath your best. Most of Oscar Wilde isn't played. Most of Mozart isn't played. None of me will never not be played. From Jimmy and Frogger to chapter seventeen of the present epic, it is, with the possible exception of some of "Michelle's First Secret" and "Michelle's Second Secret", all alpha A-list with not a pound of cereal in a hundred pounds of premium, aged beef. Yes, the technical quality improves to a small degree, but I'm probably the only one who notices; other than that, there's not a flat note in the symphony, but the joke is, they amount to a hundred symphonies; a million words, probably five-hundred of which I'd delete or re-cast, had I the inclination. But, in the end, my self-imposed question seems to have no answer. Einstein did nothing but dither the last thirty-three years of his life. A hundred writers are famous for one book, maybe two. (Margaret Mitchell, Stephen Crane, Eric Segal, and Peter Benchley, to name just four, with Ken Kesey added for good measure.) If there is an answer, it's deficient preparation and falling into the trap of saying things because you say them well without the depth to know what to say, or, in some cases, finding such depths no one can understand your message. Intellectually, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, and the only answer that's worked for me is practice on a scale that has not the remotest parallel in the world of art. If Dostoyevsky had practiced instead of drinking and gambling, he would have written a shelf of "Brothers Karamazovs" and laughed at the original as the scratching of a buffoon parading as a novelist. But others have practiced, too, granted, not for eighteen hours a day for thirty years, but plenty enough to get on the high road, and it's done them little good. You do not practice to be a writer, but it takes enormous practice; the distinction is not subtle. I was just thinking of the scene in "Ground Hog Day" when John Murray takes piano lessons. I was force-fed a diet of eighty-eight keys at ages ten and eleven. All I can remember is whispering `dammit' about twenty times a minute, and that was just the scales. But what a kick to go back wanting to learn, and happy to practice two or three hours every day. Imagine seeing a piano teacher smile. You guys get me on your throne where I belong, obey me so stringently I'm able to keep my nose out of your business, and that will leave me the free times, and, presumably, the funding to study music. Best deal you'll get this century, and, brother, is it going to be a long century. My old-time readers are beginning to tense up about now. They know how smashingly they will be rewarded for allowing me my little non-fiction holiday. I become guilt-ridden, and, so practiced am I at existing under this mantel, I end a long essay with a series of drop-dead scenes, therefore, I'm taking this little minute to advise you that such a treat is in store you'll quickly be joining those who tense reflexively at the long-winded diatribe. It may not be scientific, but it's as Pavlovian as it gets. Just wait and see, you'll be praying for Emerson the essayist (hmm, that has a ring to it). Well, if I'm going to be pulling any rabbits out of hats around here, I'd better get back to the novel, back to Octavo and Pius who seem to have fallen half asleep in the shade of the olive tree. "How did it start at the pool?" Pius asked. "Brado asked me some questions to be sure I knew what he meant by mature things, you know, that were going to happen after the door to the locker room was locked. I told him I'd heard stories around school, but that was just kids talking so I didn't know how much was true. He asked if anyone had ever touched me, and I told him that hadn't happened. He said some of the players might want to while they were fooling around together, and asked if I thought that would get me uptight. My voice got all squeaky, but I think I said it would be okay. Then he asked me if I'd like to do something with him, in private, in the office, while the team was practicing." "Was his voice funny?" the young driver asked. "Yeah," the boy whispered, "and he yawned a lot. I was so nervous and excited, already, I almost fainted, then, when he sounded all husky like he had the flu, I knew he was going to do sick stuff with me, and I was powerful glad, to quote the American Westerns, I was healthy enough to find out what that stuff was." "The well-read psyche is a durable thing," Pius allowed, nodding. "Brado was more a physical kind of guy," Octavo giggled, "matter-of-fact and brusque more than sensitive and introspective. He had no issues in the self-esteem department. In a way it was kind of sexy, but only for a date. Egos aren't much fun under any circumstances, you know, unless you write a great novel or start a billion-dollar business from the ground up, you're pretty much doing what everyone else does, so why fuss about the small stuff? and an athletic ego is the most pathetic of all for the simple reason that two B guys can defeat an A guy and a ninety-seven-pound weakling can pop a guy like Tyson with the cheapest gun on the market. So much for beefcake, but, allowing for all that, at that time and in that situation, it was kinda comforting to be mastered by a six-two powerhouse, whom I thought, until I met you, was pretty manly in the manly department." "You know that part I told you about waiting until you're forty to write?" Pius intoned, "I think you might do well to forget it; in fact, instinct tells me it would be an idea for you to start as soon as possible." "Early stuff is just talent," the child responded, "glib and facile, like frosting on a cake or beating an empty tin pan. You were right about waiting, just like I love you because you're the opposite of the athletic quick study." "Did he take you as soon as he got you in the office?" the driver asked. "He was really nervous, at first," the boy said, "that was while he had is clothes on. He asked me if I'd ever seen an adult male naked, because there was a boy's changing room I always used before, and I told him I hadn't. He said he had a boner and asked if that would embarrass me. I was pretty embarrassed and nervous so I didn't say anything, just shook my head. He said I should face the wall and he'd tell be when to turn around, so I did. I heard him undress and put his clothes on his desk, then he told be to turn around. He had his hands behind his neck, like you did to show me, and his legs were spread and he was leaning back against the wall." "What did you think when you saw him?" Pius asked. "He made me think of sperm," the boy said with a shy laugh, "we'd just had it in biology, you know, with pictures and stuff, so I knew it came from males and what it was for, but that was all vague and academic. I knew he must have had it and the way he was posing, I knew he wanted to show it to me and teach me about it." "We picked you because the boy we had said you were the most mature ten year old he knew," Brado Carvell said to the boy standing in front of him. The doc says that's because you have more hormones, and that means you'll like the things that happen after we lock the door better than other boys might." "Oh," Octavo said, nodding nervously. "It's okay to be scared," the six-two nineteen-year-old team captain said, "because it's a cave and some kids get hurt in it, but you won't; we'll be gentle with you, and the door is always open from the inside, no one's going to try to stop you if you want to leave, and Jorge says you have almost a teen-size penis, so there's nothing for you to be self-conscious about in that department." "Okay," the tall, slightly pudgy boy responded. "Would you like me to strip you?" the man asked, his penis bulging and his voice rasping. "Okay," Octavo whispered. "It's all going to be gentle," the coach said, crossing the carpet, standing for a moment in front of the child, arms at his side, then lowering to his knees as he pulled Octavo's jersey from his shorts. The boy shyly raised his hands over his head, and the tall athlete stood, pulling the shirt up and off, then tossing it on his desk. He stood close to the bare-chested child. "Want to feel me against you?" he whispered. "Yes," the boy said. Brado pulled the ten year old gently against his straining penis, nuzzling the boy's immature chest by surging his hips gently to the youth. "Is it okay?" he asked. "Yes," the boy whispered back. "All the players want to do this with you, but you'll be lying down and they'll be kneeling over you, is that okay?" "Yes," the boy said. "Do you want to ask any questions before I get you naked?" the teen asked. "Just if there'll be any of the stuff we studied in school," the boy said, reddening, "you know..." "Semen," the coach said, "that's what the doc calls it. Guys call it cum, but on the team we call it what they did in the book, Jorge had the same one when he was ten, and that is `sperm'. So, to answer your question, yes, you'll get to see it, and the guys will want to get it on your body, especially on your face and your chest and your upper legs. In fact," he went on, "we haven't been doing stuff guys usually do so we'd be extra intense when it came to welcoming you to the polo club. That's meant to make it more exciting for you, but only you can decide that." "It's pretty exciting, already," Octavo observed. "Do you like looking at my body?" the man asked, still kneeling in front of the boy. "Yes," the boy said. "Will you like it when I take your underpants off and look at you?" the man whispered. "I want to do it with you, in private, before the others come in, is that okay?" Octavo replied. "Yes," the man said, "steady yourself on my shoulders." The boy did so and the coach unbuckled his belt and pulled down his shorts, leaving the child in his white, cotton underpants. "Let me do it from behind you before I get you naked," he said, standing and pulling the boy's back against him. "Put your hands behind my neck, like I had mine when you saw me," the coach said. Octavo stretched up on his tiptoes and reached up behind him. "Like this?" he asked. "Yes," the man hissed, fully taking the arching boy with his hands. "This is where most of the sperm will be," he said, fondling the boy's nipples and slightly soft belly, "but there will be a lot on your face, too. It depends how you hold the man, so that's what I can teach you if you're ready to be naked with me." "Okay," Octavo said. "Let me do this a little more," Brado said, "it feels really good. You have a beautiful body, and the bulge in your underpants would look good on a fifteen year old." "Thanks," the boy whispered. "We'll put your underpants back on after you've had your lesson with me," the coach explained, "because all the guys will want to have a turn with you this way, only you don't have to put your arms up if you don't want to." "I like the feeling of it this way," the child said. "There's thirteen more," the man reminded him, "so anytime you've had enough of anything you don't have to make excuses or anything, just say something and do what you want to do. With a man and boy, the boy is always in charge of what happens behind a locked door. Nowhere else, but in private, yes. Understand?" "I think so," the boy said. "Well," Brado said, "so far you've responded beautifully. With your physical maturity, your extreme good looks as far as being sexy goes, and a little experience, you will be a super lover and you'll like the things that happen just as much as the man does." "You're a good teacher," the boy said. "Any of the guys would be the same," Brado said, "they all like you, and they're all experienced at having sex with a child because of Jorge, plus some of them have juvenile partners outside the club." "I'm still glad it's you," the boy responded. "Me, too," the coach agreed, turning the boy in his arms, hugging the soft young belly firmly to him for a minute, then dropping to his knees to pull off the ten year old's underpants. "You are one very beautiful young male animal," he whispered, foundling the naked child and gently pulling down the foreskin of his slim five-inch erection. "It feels nice when you touch me," Octavo whispered. "I'll to this while the players are spilling on you," the man said, "it's called jerking off, but we call it masturbating in the club, like we call cum, sperm.| "Can I do it with you?" Octavo asked. "That's up to you," the athlete said, "I'd love to share your first time in private on my sofa, but if you want to wait for the team, that would be cool, too." "I'd like it to be in private," Octavo said. "Okay," the naked nineteen year old said. He led Octavo to the sofa and lay him back, spreading the boy's long legs wide and then kneeling between his slightly pudgy thighs and huddling over the ninety-pound body beneath him. "This is how they'll mount you," he whispered, "then you take the adult's penis in your hands and masturbate him He'll start ejaculating in a minute or two, and you can hunch up or down underneath him to get the sperm where you want. If you make him spray on your belly or your thighs, you'll be able to see it coming out of his penis; if you want the sperm on your face, you want be able to see what happens as well, but Jorge liked that, so I thought I'd tell you." "Okay," the boy whispered. "Are you ready for it to happen?" Brado asked. "Yes," Octavo replied. "Okay," the man husked, "I'm ready, too. I'll get some gel and teach you how to masturbate an adult, okay?" "Yes," the boy panted. Brado found the gel in a drawer of his desk and returned to kneel between the naked boy's widely spread legs. "This is just for the first time," he explained, "after that, you're hand will be wet with semen, and you won't need any other lubricant." "Is it slippery?" the ten year old asked. "At first, then sticky," the man explained, yawning. "So I'll need to keep getting more on my hand?" he asked, rhetorically. "There will be lots," the coach assured the neophyte. "Isn't it just a few drops?" Octavo asked, "I mean, at school it's all under a microscope so it's hard to tell." "We'll let that be a mystery for the moment," Brado said, with a laugh, "and I'll teach you how to solve it." "Good," the boy said. "Okay," the teen said, "this is what I'm going to be doing with you while the other players mount, just stroking you a little because I don't want you to spray until all the adults have been with you, okay?" "It feels nice," the boy said. "It will feel very intense after awhile," Brado cautioned, "so try not to get impatient. Trust me. There's no way I'll leave you hanging, unsatisfied; you'll have a full cum in my hand as soon as Gill's ejaculated on you, he's the youngest, eighteen, so he'll be your final orgy partner, then I'll masturbate so all of us can watch you cum." "How long?" the boy whispered. "With Jorge the first orgy took half an hour, but we kind of lingered over the second one, so it took longer." "When did the second one happen?" the boy wanted to know. "An hour after the first one. We went out for pizza, then came back here." "Wow," the boy said. "Very intense, bucko," the athlete said, "men with young boys become very good lovers, and, since most of them were molested when they were children, they know how to please a young male better than most females, plus, they're ugly and stupid, so they try a lot harder." Octavo giggled as his coach straddled his waist, guiding the boy's hands to their proper positions on his hard penis. "Use the hand with the gel like this, he whispered, "and cup me with your left hand, squeezing pretty tight with your index finger, right here, so you can feel when the orgasm starts. Good. That's perfect. Now practice scooting underneath me, I'll get down over you, so you can either see my sperm or take it on your neck and face. Your nipples are about as far up as you'll be able to see what happens, so think what you want and practice positioning me against your body. It will be easier on the message table, and the guys will be there to steady you and the adult mounted over you. Jorge was able to get it right in just a few minutes, then he was able to relax and just let it happen with man after man until Umberto, the former head coach, he's a pro, now, made him ejaculate they way I'm going to make you. Any questions?" "I'd better not, I like the answers too much," the boy giggled. "Well," the young team leader said, "we won't sodomize you, that means enter you from the back, and there won't be any rough stuff or bondage, like you see in the porn magazines, and it will only happen here in our office or in the locker room, nothing goes on outside, they guys won't be fighting to date you and stuff like that. When we went on road trips with Jorge, we used to bring candles and mount him on a quilt with a towel over it and be extra quiet so nothing was obvious, so the rules are kind of strict even though its hypocritical. The team elected you because they felt you were mature enough to distinguish the difference between statutory rape and coloring between the lines, elsewhere; one big sin being paid for by many small virtues, or something like that." "I'll keep it secret," the boy promised. "You don't have to do that," the coach responded, "you can tell the right people at the right time, and, to be honest, you probably should tell any other potential partner. Privacy is usually, nine-to-one odds, secrecy, and, while it's one thing to keep a mistress secret from his wife, to spare her feelings, those rules don't apply to homosexual relationships unless you want to live as an overt gay, in which case everything gives you a case of the jitters. The players like to talk while things are happening, but it can easily be overdone, so if you want to know how they started doing things like this, it's definitely okay to ask. During practice, there's not much to do, so if you want to be alone with one of us, just display and you can come in here with him and lock the door. As long as it doesn't interfere with a smooth practice, you're on your own. Okay?" "Yes," the boy said, as Brado lowered himself over the boy. "Where do you want me to cum?" he asked, panting to the boy's now experienced use of his two hands on his huge, hard erection. "On me," Octavo whispered, maneuvering under the adult so he was able to masturbate him on his own swollen penis. "Do you want to look down, or look into my eyes?" the teen panted. "Down, the first time, is that okay?" the boy said, gazing into the face of the handsome athlete half-crouched over him. "Yes," Brado croaked, "I'll tell you when to look. I'm getting really close to cumming on you." "Cum on me," the boy squeaked, his hands working avidly as the tall athlete spread his legs more widely and thrust his hips to the boy's hands in a series of short, fast strokes. "I am," the shaking athlete managed to gasp. Octavo looked down and stared for half a minute, then gasped as a hot jet of sperm splashed hard off the soft skin of his heaving young belly. Vaguely remembering the young man's instructions, he gripped him hard. "I feel more," he gasped, and in half a second the hard, swollen glans of the young adult sent a second hot snake to its water grave on the sweating child's now-heaving belly. "I'm cumming," the coach groaned down to the boy, and then pulses again and again in Octavo's strong, young hands. "On my face," the boy hissed, sliding wetly under the male as the teen surged forward. He'd just steadied the big penis against his chin when a torrent of semen spurted over his lips and cheeks, then several more, and the athlete collapsed gently to the side of the boy beneath him. "Don't wipe it," he whispered, "let's take you out to the pool like you are, and put an end to the athletic stuff, quick time." "Wow," the boy sighed, "when you said intense, you really meant it." "It is kinda," the captain allowed, "and it will be more so when I'm kneeling by your right hip and masturbating you." "Will you do it a little, now?" the boy askd. "Yes, babe," the athlete whispered, rising from the couch. "This is how they guy's will take you if you shower with them," he explained, standing behind the boy in the classic stance, "just spread your legs as wide as you can to show you welcome what's happening to you." "Okay," Octavo said, as Brado demonstrated what would happen my masturbating the boy carefully and gently for a minute. He left off, gently, and brought Octavo to his right hip, guiding the boy's left arm around his waist. "This is how the boy masturbates the man," he coached, guiding the child's right hand to his still huge, wet erection, and teaching him. "Just like when we were on the sofa, only it's almost better this way because your legs are tense from standing, and that makes cumming feel hotter." "I like it standing, too," the boy noted. "Just don't turn the water on when I guy takes you into the shower, wastes hot water, and, if it's running, you won't see anything in the spray." "Okay," Octavo said as Brado gently removed his hand from his penis and led the ten year old mascot through the door leading to the pool. "And it happened with all of them?" Pius asked. "Yes," the boy said, "but some of the younger guys couldn't wait so they stood beside the table and masturbated each other on my shoulders and face while I was making another player spray on my belly or my chest." "Did you like what Brado was doing with you?" the driver asked. "His hand was soaked, it felt really slippery on me," the boy whispered in his breaking, adolescent voice. "Were you able to stay under control?" Pius quizzed. "He was experienced with Jorge," the boy said, "so he knew how to keep getting me more excited until the first time was over and all the team was huddled around, then two of the players held my legs really wide apart and he knelt between my legs and used both his wet hands and I couldn't control any more and I had my first cum while they all watched me." "Did you have any sperm?" the coach quizzed. "I just got really wet, then I closed my eyes, but it felt like two times I did what the older boys did," the boy said. "What happened when you first went up to the pool," Pius asked. "The scrimmage stopped, a whistle blew, but it kinda faded out. The guys all stripped out of their suits while they were still in the water, then Brado held me in front of the ladder and each player got out so I could watch him get a boner, then, when they were all dried, they took me into the gym and lay be back on the table, and it started happening right away." "Did you have a favorite, besides Brado?" the young man wanted to know. "Fargo Dante," the boy said, "he was the first one I went in the shower with after we came back from pizza." "Were you alone with him a lot?" Pius quizzed. "I broke the rules and dated him," the boy said, " and I stayed over with him twice when his roommate was out of town." "Did you like being with him all night?" the teen asked. "Not so much," the boy said, "I liked the physical part, but we didn't have much to talk about, and, after awhile he wanted to kiss me, but luckily that was just when Julio replaced me so we were able to at least stay friends." "It's cool things were as mild-mannered as that," Pius observed. "I'd never want to be part of a team again," the boy said, "but they were totally cool almost all the time; it's just that I'm pretty caught up in myself and only have time for men who like to talk about books and politics and the news, not just sports and girls till they're coming out your ears. Maths whizzes get all the breaks, which is how it should be, so we bookworms have to work doubly hard and be doubly careful who we spend our free time with. You can be good at maths and get by, but you have to be a great writer to even be noticed." "We come from the same glob of clay," Pius added, "I don't think two peas were ever more alike." "That's why I want you at least a little bit inside me," the boy said, "even if it makes me walk stiffly for a few days; I'll say I slipped getting out of the truck, if anyone asks, which I don't see why they would." "They'll know at the truck stops," the driver observed, "you'll get a few winks, but probably more pats on the head than anything else. If you meet anyone special, tell me and we'll try to arrange a meeting, but there will be ships that pass in the night, it's the way of the world" "I'm happy with the ship that stopped for me," the boy said, "but writers have to build colossal egos, so, maybe, once in awhile I'll come to you with a bright idea." "The better we take care of business most of the time, the more time we'll have to ourselves when we want it, another way of the world." "Let's at least try it," the now twelve-year-old boy whispered, separating from the adult and rolling on his back, spreading his long legs widely and grabbing his knees to pull them against his panting chest. Pius looked down into his eyes for a long moment, then positioned himself between the child's legs, bent far over the boy who now had his feet against the driver's rugged shoulders, and probed against him. Octave let go of his leg with his right hand and guided the young man to him, arching so his belly was hard against the man's stomach, and then urging Pius forward with glowing eyes and the movements of his young body against that of the mature male. "Relax as much as you can," the older male coaxed. The boy's head sand back against the blue quilt and he sighed softly. >From the tree, Armando and his friends could see the faint rippling of the muscles of Pius' lower back as the man thrust in short, quick stabs against the immature body beneath his own powerful, athletic frame. After a minute or two, the man went rigid against the boy, letting him rest and get used to what was happening. "It definitely feels like rape," the child gasped. "Do you want me to get off you?" the young man asked solicitously. "Before we go back to the truck," the boy giggled, "we don't want to be causing any accidents." "Does it hurt?" the man asked. "Small time," the young writer-in-training allowed, "but when I get used to you, I have a feeling it's going to feel really nice." "We can probably be together a few times, since it seems to be good for you," the man said, "but after that, once a month. Making you a boty-boy freak is not something I want any part of." "I'm ready for you, more," the boy said. "Okay," the man said, his muscles again taking up the exploratory rhythm as the boy toyed with his heaving, sweating chest, lightly pinching his swollen, light-brown nipples. "I'm glad this is happening," the boy grunted after another few minutes, "it'll make me more careful about taking any chances with some guy who might really rape me." "They're out there," the man grunted back, "very few females are like an inexperienced young boy, so you want to watch it, and, if it does happen, the fact we've been together a few times will make it easier on you. "Of course," he added, "that's not even mentioning diseases; another pretty big reason not to take chances." "Have you ever mounted a kid like this before?" the boy asked. "No," the drivers said, "we stuck to classic Greek activities, and they actually frowned on what we're doing. They liked to masturbate each other, heads on each others shoulders, so they could talk and coax each other. That's always seemed civilized enough to fill the bill." "How about in their mouths," Octavo asked. "That happened, too," the man acknowledged, "once a week or so, when we had extra time, but usually in the sleeper we'd just lie facing each other and talk, cumming on each other a couple of times before we went to sleep." "Every night?" the student asked. "More like every second or third night, after the first couple of weeks," Pius said, "and sometimes five or six days would slip by with scheduling hassles and breakdowns. That made it like the first time all over again." "It got better with Brado, Fargo and the team," the boy commented, "do you think it will with us?" "Yes," the man said, "I'm too scared of hurting you to really feel what's happening between us." "And I hurt to much to feel everything," the boy panted in response, "but I'd still want you with me this way if the pain was three times worse." "It's very hard to hold still," the man groaned. "I love it when you do," the boy said, but the lively movement of his pre-teen body under the man above him showed he also loved pleasing the half-giant now in his arms as he pulled the man too him, wrapping his long, naked legs around the athlete's straining thighs and pulling hard. More minutes passed. Hissing sighs and choked groans drifted softly from the couple. Pius sometimes rose on rigid arms so they could look down between their bodies, then fell, exhausted, back on top of the twelve year old underneath him to hold him still, kissing his head and listening careful to his young partners moans. Half an hour passed and the gentle struggle continued like long, slow waves advancing, thrusting up on the beach, and withdrawing for long moments before the cycle was repeated. "You're getting really deep in me," the boy rasped. "I know, I feel it too," the man whispered, "do you want me to go up so you can look?" "Yes," the boy hissed. "Just a minute, then," the man said, gasping and shaking, but rising on his arms in half the promised time. "Over half," the boy said, "it looks so amazing." "It's definitely big on the porn circuit," the man acknowledged. "Big bear inside a frisky little lamb," the boy managed to giggle. "Big bear inside bare-bottom boy, no kinky stuff," the driver huffed. "I feel like a lamb and a girl," Octavo said, then his eyes jolted open in shock. "My god," he whispered, "you're cumming." The response was inarticulate and unnecessary. A heavy gush of slick, white semen gouted from between the boy's widely spread legs, and the man, with a feral bellow, entered wildly and fully in a single plunging stroke. Wet, the boy accepted him with a harsh whispered, "Yes, yes." Their young bodies froze, the man still on his powerful arms, both males staring wide-eyed down at the continuous heavy flow coming from their successful mating. Another long, panting, straining minute and it was half over. Pius rested over the boy catching his breath, then rose to his knees, pulling Octavo gently to him so the boy lay with his calves splayed to either side of the athlete's waist. Wetting his hand from between their sweating bodies, he took the arching, panting youth's long, slim penis in both hands and masturbated him gently and slowly, while still embedded to the hilt in his willing young partner. "Oh, they could never do it quite right," the boy sighed, his arms now at his side so he could thrust into the tight hands on his iron-hard penis. "Spread your legs more and put your hands behind your neck," the driver suggested. Octavo complied, arching his smooth, boyish chest and splaying wantonly as the man deep inside him wet his hand and began stroking his five-inch circumcised penis with long, hard strokes. "Yes," the boy whispered repeated, "don't stop." "Are you getting close?" his partner asked. "Yes," the boy said, and repeated the word again. A minute passed as the man slowly intensified his stroking and fondling, then Octavo whispered, "I'm cumming." Pius froze his hand hard, low on the twelve year old, and the boy repeated his warning, then started spray high, straight up in the air. "I'm cumming," he repeated again, and then lost control, spurting hot and wildly in the man's big, solid hands, half dazed, half conscious of his sperm covering his partner's face and neck, and finally conscious of nothing but lying back exhausted as he pulsed to an ebb, his nerves jangling as Pius gave him a few gentle strokes to complete him fully. Now it's a rare novelist that intrudes, in the first place, with editorial this and journalistic that, and I think you'd have to read a whole million books to find even one where the author not only intrudes with an essay, but uses it to foreshadow. In any event, I claim it as a literary first, not just because when I write a novel, I want it to be novel, but just because I thought of it, like everything else. Also, it's been many a page since I asked for direct reader involvement in the form of playing literary heavy hitter for a few moments to see if you can guess what comes next. I'll be quick about setting the stage, and say that Angel has just finished the story of Pius and Octavo, the four boys are sitting on the roots, circling their toes in the sand, and awkward silence reigning. Then a voice speaks up and it asks a question. Who talks, and what does he ask? Those are the questions on the quiz. Try to remember you've strongly foreshadowed this, not just mentioned it, in passing. In a sense, you've got one swing at home plate in Yankee Stadium, your entire career on the line. In other words, I've painted myself into such a corner, only a grand-slam will get me out of it, and no, I'm not going back in the script and writing this, it's coming out in real time. Whole career, all the marbles, all you have to do is have one character ask one question, and either ignominy or blistering triumph are yours forever. Think. Take your time. The four boys are Raul, Armando, Angel and Juan. Only one of them breaks the tensely excited silence in the remote arroyo. I'm getting ready to cue, not wanting to irritate less playful readers, so this is kind of your last chance to stand at the plate, trying to hear the hush of the straining crowd. You know the drill, wind-up, pitch, clenched jaw... swing: Raul's voice broke the silence, so half our little mystery is solved. What did he say? Just nine simple words. "Did any of the drivers ever bring a girl?" However you came out on our little quiz, you now know what major league is all about, and, sure, now New York needs a new premier ball park, but New York needs a lot of things, so a damaged stadium in just an item on a list. Sorry, I tried to warn you, but you're dealing with good old Yankee blue, and in its purest form, it's incomprehensible, and not always because of simplemindedness. A grunt came spontaneously from Armando and his friends. By accord, the three older boys stood, pulled their shorts and briefs to the ground, then straightened, standing with their huge erections almost touching as Raul stared at them in awe. "Yes," Armando said as he knelt in front of his nine-year-old nephew, and stripped the child naked. "You better sit in my lap while I tell you, okay?" "Yes," the boy said, happily, as the trio resumed their perches, now sitting close enough so their legs and naked torsos touched. "Her name was Ravella Consuelo," Armando began as his young cousin settled contentedly back against his young, naked body, his circumcised penis jutting high between the little boy's soft, honey-brown legs, "and she was ten." "I'm not really tired, Daddy, I just wanted to talk to you without you having to look in mirrors all the time." It was nearing noon, and the grove was quiet and still between occasional passing trucks and the soft, distant swish of those light vehicles with mufflers. The girl was a seventy-pound beauty, tall and slim with a mop of short, shiny black hair framing a pixie face with big brown eyes. She was obviously but lightly Hispanic, her skin honey colored and flawless.