Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 23:06:36 -0600 From: Tom Emerson Subject: ONCE FISH AT A TIME CHAPT. TWENTY ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPTER TWENTY "Nordstrom," Dave said, "rowing isn't any great window to universal truths and the enigmatic, it is a way to get a boat from the dock to the island. It's not to be fought like heresy or despotism, it is to be regarded in the softer light of method over madness. You have two oars. A philosopher deals with dozens. Save your energy for the latter and yield to the former. Patiently, slowly, sweep them for and aft, engaging the surface of the water as you pull in the direction of your manly chest and allowing them to breathe the moist coastal air of Maine as you push your hands back toward my manly chest." "Couldn't you just stomp my kneecaps with your manly, clam-diggers' boots?" the thirteen-year-old boy said, a pleased expression on his roundish and aware face with it's trim of sandy hair. "Would I do that to a good Catholic?" Dave Irving said. "I'm a Catholic with a good priest," Nordstrom said. "Who's taught you lower philosophy than a catfish eats for dinner," the twenty-eight year old teacher observed. "I'm bound for military school," the cute boy grimaced, "what kind of philosophy would you suggest?" "Perhaps something high enough that the apes couldn't reach it," the man suggested. They struggled on across the half mile across the island, the boy's hands slowly untangling and adapting the easy rhythm of sliding a long, slim rowboat rather than jamming it like a pram. "You're not getting good at it," the rear-seat passenger allowed, "but you're not getting any worse." "If they'd shoot these walruses for blubber and not let them go around climbing into people's boats," the boy responded, "we'd have been at the island five minutes ago." Dave crinkled a smile at his student and Nordstrom grinned back. They approached quietly, the thirteen year old even proving adept at using the boat's oars against the rocks as they maneuvered into the cobble beach. The cove was sheltered by the thick pine growth of the small island and the nudged gently, the boy moving carefully off the bow, wondering which was harder, rowing a small boat or getting ashore without wet feet. The boat steady, the adult moved forward bracing himself for a moment on Nordstrom's shoulder as he leaped to a nearby boulder. Dave reviewed the dangers, very substantial, of small boats and tides, and they secured their slim vessel against being carried off on the rising water. Operating in rough tidal zones, for all the annoyance and inconvenience involved, teaches grace and coordination. The two males retrieving hamper and blanket from the half floating boat on notably rising water weren't an entire suite, but nevertheless inspired moments of neat footwork. "Clamber Aboard Island," the boy giggled as they caught their breaths on a driftwood log. "Welcome A-rock Island", the adult said, "though there's enough trees to make a-board or two." "So, Nordstrom," Dave said, letting a little sigh in his voice, "are you comfortable alone with me or should we leave the tents in the boat and head back after lunch." "That depends on what you and do not want to do," the thirteen year old said with a shy laugh. "I guess it depends on what the weather will and will not do, too," the teacher said. "I don't mean to be evasive," the boy said, "but I do have certain ideas, and I thought if we at least had lunch away from the house and the tutoring thing I could say something, then you could decide, because I'd really like to stay the whole weekend." "About the scar, the accident, Jessen," the man used, adding: "and I don't mean to be thorny or neurotic on the subject, and, to tell at least one secret, I'm glad and flattered you're interested enough to make it a major topic." "I have a major topic, too," Nordstrom said, blushing. "Secret?" the man grinned. "Yeah," the boy whispered demurely and not very convincingly. "Then you'd better stay the night." The issue settled, the pair made a second run on their replica whale boat, slinging on backpacks and wobbling over the heavy growth of boulders and cobbles. One name for it could be "Totally Save Island", Dave remarked as they circled the woods assuring themselves no bears had taken up residence on the few acres set half a mile from the nearest point of land. "You really can ask about it," Dave said, "in your shoes, I'd be curious, too. You've got the grades to earn a little down time, and I'm hanging out pretty much on my own, so if there are age and cultural aspects to our relationship, perhaps we might ignore them on a temporary, earned, me chief, you Indian, basis." "You heap-big drummer, Nordstrom heap-small rower," the boy growled. "Heap-small body need catch up with heap-big brain," Dave laughed, "so you're doomed to row to Florida." "One island at a time," the boy said. "We've done the Greeks one poet at a time," the young man said, "so it's an idea." "Is there anything to it," Mr. Irving?" the boy asked. "A lot of men have wasted a lot of time proving Not much," the teacher said, "but it is entertaining, it does provide incisive insights, and what else is there? L. Ron Hubbard?" "But it's a noose if you don't get it," the boy said, "like maths are to a lot of kids. I think in factions and then try to convert them to percentages, for fun, but two pansy's wilting over a posy just doesn't seem to go anywhere." "Why did you say `two'?" the teacher asked. The boy blushed again. "I don't know," he mumbled. "Then it's going to be a night for deep, dark secrets," the teacher growled, and they hoisted their basket and blankets the last few yards to a clearing in the middle of the island. In a half hour their camp was set with twin pup tents and a fire making coals. They returned the their comfortable driftwood couch and watched their boat swing gently from one rock to another. "If you're sure about staying," Dave said, "we can ground the boat at high tide, but we won't be able to launch it for twelve hours, unless we have to pry it from boulder to boulder because you've lost your head an are bleeding badly." "I felt comfortable setting my tent right next to yours," Nordstrom said, "so let's haul it up." That gave them a few minute's work, and then the housekeeping was up to date. "Do you have any pictures of Jessen?" the boy asked. "Yes," Dave said, "pretty much a school kid, but take a look if you want to." He fished out his wallet and flipped through the plastic sleeves. "We took these of each other three days before he was killed." "Did you guys swim together a lot?" the boy asked, studying the image of a young teen with wet black hair and a wide mouth posed against the ladder of a high board. "Merman and merboy," Dave said, "at the pool, rain or shine, distilling Plato to the splash of morons doing cannonballs." "Sounds refreshing," the boy noted. For awhile they sat watching the temporary beauty of coastal Maine at dead high tide, and bewailed the god who'd pull the plug on it all, separating dry land from wet water with a band of damp brown seaweed. "I've got some pictures, too," Nordstrom said. "He's in a bathing suit, too, which is a little weird, because it's Father Yen, and you usually see him in a collar." "I'd like to see," Dave said, showing two more pictures of Lessen Rudolph and one of himself. The boy removed a small black and white photo from his wallet and handed it to Dave." "How tall is he?" the teacher asked. "Six-five," the boy said, blushing. "If you know the secrets of staying out of his way, share them with a nonbeliever," the man responded. "He just looks like he feeds on cashiers," Nordstrom said, "he's been tamed along the way an no longer gnaws through his chain." "Well," the man said, taking a long second look at the image, "now I know what you meant about liking the priest and not the church." The two sat watching the birds. Seagulls. Damp brown water weed, crows and gulls. "How big were your secrets with Jessen?" the thirteen year old asked. "We didn't have any secrets," the teacher replied to the boy's giggle. "You know what I mean," the boy prodded. "What have you heard?" the teacher and artist asked. "Just that there were a lot of questions," the boy said, "and then most people say something like, `You know how rumors get started when there are unanswered questions.'" "Common or rare," the man without a face asked. "It comes up," the boy admitted. "And you're out here, trapped like a lobster," the man said, "I think you've settled something in yourself and that you're not some kind of spy. I hope I'm right." "I listen to the other kids," the boy said, "but we've only lived here a couple of years; this isn't my place, and, it's not that I don't care what they think, it's just that I don't seem to care very much." "Not much of a life attitude," Dave said, "but present place, present time, present boy, I vote yea." "I'll come back to visit," the boy said, "but narrow enough to question you and Lessen is too narrow for me." "We couldn't have been accepted," Dave said, "it had to and it has to be a shadow thing. What would the alternative be? Teacher's dating students, having them as overnight guests, taking trips with them? Where would it end? Sitting up until eleven, reading, talking about history and politics; dissecting religion and current events, debating the abstract and arguing the unknowable? What a world that would be. Fifty million boys with the beginnings of perspective and hints of insight, watching the documentary channels, reading the computer magazines; why it's hard to imagine an end to it all." "Father Yen says the church would argue for spirituality and faith," Nordstrom said, "that the icons of religion had stood the test of time, that the glory and the spirit are themselves divine, that the mystic and the ghostly are part of a great plan, that there was more to hymn and psalm than clever words that rhyme." "Glory, glory, hallelujah, this kind is super fine.", the man laughed, finishing the boy's impromptu doggerel, and, least the obvious escape a single reader, falling madly in love with his student. "It is great entertainment," Dave said after some moments, "and there is beautiful poetry, sentiment, and passion, but no insight. Cut and dried, decreed with leather on hide, no place to run, with fingernails yet to be pried." "Father Yen would give you a run for your money," the boy mused. "He can have it if he lets me run," the man responded. "He's cute," the boy blushed, "calm as breath, off a warm sea, still as the water under that breath. You're just jealous that he has a face at all." "Nordstrom," the man whined, "we did not come out here to fall in love and set up housekeeping, so knock it off with the cute stuff, yourself." "I didn't come here to do anything of the kind," the boy shot back, "I accomplished that mission, with no theatrics, when you were playing Goofus O'Moron the drill sergeant and making me dig holes and fill them in while speaking in tongues to something that wasn't even there. I said to myself that there was a man so overwhelmed with the abnormal that it's actually quite beautiful. That was all it took, and I remember thinking only one thing and that was how glad I was to have an excuse to take my shirt off near you. Love. You can't can it, you can't label it, and no one inspects it before it drifts off on the air." "You were very discreet," Dave whispered to the boy sitting on his left. "We had work to do, and I have a lot farther to go on that stuff than you do, so the chances slipped by," the boy said. "Besides, you were being paid, and that scared me." "I'm glad we didn't wait until after the Fourth," Dave said, "I'd hate to have camped with you the last week of August." "We're ships that tarry in the night, at least," the child added. "I wish I could ring `Finished With Engines' instead of `Standby'," Dave said, continuing a nautical dialogue that had begun early in their relationship. "I wonder how often it happens," the boy mused in response. "A kid like me and a man like you find some opportunity to leave everything behind, and live happily ever after." "A few in five thousand," the man guessed, "I'm sure it happens, or at least I hope it does, and, ironically, it could happen with us. I've got enough money and friends from over the years we could shuffle happily off to Buffalo so we'd appreciate Mexico that much more when we crossed the border. But I have no inclination to do something like that, do you?" "I don't see any challenge or mystery to it," the boy agreed. "There's too much neat stuff flying around out there to jump into a box that says: `Relationship', and, for me, that would be a girl, anyhow." "That puts us on the same page on that issue," Dave noted, "which is comforting. With Lessen, it was different. He did want all of everything, that's why the papers made an extra thing of a routine skid and crash accident, because he'd acted erratically from his first week in my class, first, very privately with letters, but then in more obvious ways like being by my car in the parking lot and bicycling around my house. It wasn't overt, but it wasn't very subtle, either. His letters concerned me from the beginning. I did sixteen years in school and never even thought of writing a teacher a letter. I tried being a little open, but, predictably, that led to a nose-of-the-camel-in-the-tent situation Finally I let young Mr. Carpenter win. Changed from afraid to what-the-hell. I was single, no dependents, the house here and another in Florida, dating a second cousin I'd known growing up, I could afford to take a chance. Thus the swimming. From stiff interviews because of his letters, which he claimed were just stories he pirated from the Web, to spending six or eight hours a week together learning to use the high board." "And that wasn't enough?" Nordstrom asked. I would have given a lung for an hour a week with Father Yen. "I'm not quite as spectacular as your priest," Dave noted. "You're more exciting than he is," the boy remarked, "because to me an ounce of brains is worth more than an inch of..." "Two point five four centimeters," the teacher interrupted, hoping to keep things as tidily in line with Grecian ideals as possible with this dazzling specimen of boy. "Something like that," Nordstrom blushed. "I guess it's a little Romeo, Romeo to be finicky about the linguistic side of passion," the teacher responded, "but if you treat it like philosophy, largely as entertainment, and paint yourself, just sometimes, as a single dancer before your priest's god, then you should speak well or he'll end up holding your tongue." "Father Yen would have preferred a long confession," the boy said. "I'm on his side there," the young teacher said. Lessen and I went that route, starting with his letters, and it worked for two years. He was satisfied, and got back into the swing of being a normal kid. Then I had a breakthrough in my painting. He liked an edge he saw in my work and wanted me to do a portrait of him. Again, something that he really wanted came up, the first thing being me, and he started getting moody and difficult. Yielding once had worked, so I yielded a second time. But guess what. Being rendered in oil as the beauty he was, and yes, naked beauty, set off new fires, and, a few weeks later, they led to the accident." "We didn't bring a shovel, I guess," the boy mused, changing the subject. "No, why?" Dave said. "I just had an urge to dig some holes," the boy whispered shyly. "In granite boulders?" the teacher asked. "I thought a metal blade screeching on the rocks might wake somebody up, and, at the very least I'd be..." "Bare chested," the man whispered, completing the child's sentence. "Plato would say that was the second-to-god Form," the boy recited. "The perfection of the adolescent as an ideal almost as unthinkable as it is unobtainable, then me, as the earthbound, day-to-day Form of a kid digging a hole, and my wishes off of digging, as the farthest Form from god." "All that and you can convert fractions," Dave mused. "All that and I summer on a stone and the end of a rock," the boy responded, glancing around at the ledges forever meeting the sea, but for the one cobble beach where only boulders did the job. "Anyone who's out of the tropics is in the wrong place," the artist said, "so you've got lots of company." "Just half way up the Amazon, that's all I want," the boy said, "I'm not into exploring or coming out like Ben Loman, I just want to see different birds once in awhile, to hear different sounds, to know I don't know it all, that I'll never see it all, that I'm human. Around here, you see it all in a month, so you become a god because you do know it all; nothing surprises you, nothing intrigues you, nothing stirs in a bush that could kill you. Books and sun and a typewriter, a few decades to leach out the bad stuff and then take a look around. If you've blown your life at least you tried. Many are called, few are chosen, you know, that game, and even ending up with the softest call and as the last choice." "It's killed many a young man," Dave said, "these brass buttons lead to this death, that blazing trumpet to that death, this book to a forsaken desert, that film to `Temptation Island'." Nordstrom Davis had had enough. He'd fended off one droll barb after another in the name of maturity and dignity, to save nothing of emerging masculinity. And there was a second facet. He'd watched the couples in the arms of Father Yen and they'd lain back in his easy chair and masturbated incessantly for the entire first hour of attractive heterosexual couples becoming as hot for each other as he was for the tall wiry Eurasian showering his belly with cum at a particularly sensual scene. So, in total, the background of funny remarks, and the intense taboo of being wetted with the seed of a priest tripped the last of the boy's safety circuits and he began giggling, quickly slipping into weeping hysterics as he fell into Dave's lap. "It might be the stone or it might be the rock, but something's getting to you kid," the older male said as he petted the child's gasping, choking head. His words, meant merely playfully, were interpreted by the boy as exceedingly wry and droll, sending him into a new spasm of fits and rapture. "It's an island, let's keep it that way," the man added, sensing the boy was about to settle down and wiping away his tears. In a couple of minutes he did the job over and snorting and hiccupping the boy settled comfortably back at his left elbow as they made bets with each other as to high the tide would actually rise. The maths boy devised a time-based system of scoring, and they played by putting small stones at presumed high points, then waiting five minutes to place another stone. Since the tides vary to a degree there is no dependable mark representing high water, so the game engaged them until it was obvious the water was ebbing and Dave was rewarded with all the marking stones for missing by less than half a linear (as against vertical) inch. They returned briefly to their camp to encourage the fire, and made a last circuit of their small confines double checking for bears before they'd begin cooking dinner. They then returned to their driftwood and sat as before, the boy at the man's left arm. "Did Lessen think you were funny?" the boy asked. "Sometimes he had kind of fits," the older male answered, "you know, spells, attacks. Frankly, I tried not to notice, but I do have to say I thought it sometimes unbecoming so I hope you'll let that be a lesson to you and if you interpret something in a frivolous way that you have the dignity not to engage in any kind of overt display." "Or there goes the island and our dry sleeping bags," the boy mused. "I see your point." "No fire, no boat, no place to swim," Dave added, and the boy nodded in understanding. "Too bad about that shovel," Nordstrom whispered shyly after enough minutes had passed to be sure of his frivolity cure. "You could pretend," the man said "You're five years under age, and the law is flexible when it comes to make-believe." "I want to," the boy said softly, rising and turning to his right to stand between his master's knees. "I want to, too," Dave whispered, touching Nordstrom's handsome face, then running his fingers back past the boy's ears and under his jaw to his neck. Looking into the child's eyes, he continued his feather touch to the boy's first button. He undid them all as the thirteen year old pulled his white shirt from his cargo shorts and placed on the log, then stood of his adult partner, arms high over his head. Dave pulled the beautiful young boy to him, kissing and softly sucking his nipples as he rand his fingers slowly from the child's soft, smooth underarms down the taut sleekness of his gently heaving flanks. "Father Yen did it mostly from behind me," the boy whispered, "and he was naked even the first time." "Did you strip romantically?" the man asked, "or locker-room?" "Kind of slowly, I guess," the boy said, blushing as his master looked deep into his gentle blue eyes. "Where did it happen?" Dave asked, standing and gently turning the boy. Nordstrom responded by reaching back and linking his arms behind the powerful male behind him, and arching and wriggling to the strong hands that quickly found his slightly soft belly. "In his bedroom at the rectory," the boy said. "Were you alone with him or were other boys watching?" Dave whispered. "He had me alone," the boy said. "And it was your first time?" the artist asked. "I saw something in the woods once," the boy whispered, "but it was the first time anything happened to me.' "Did you start it, or did he?" the man asked. "I did," Nordstrom replied. "How?" the man asked. "In confession," the child explained, "I said I'd been having sinful dreams. He asked me about them. I said I kept dreaming I was running and I bumped my head on a honey tree and my hair got all sticky, then I was in a shower trying to wash it off, only the shower was in the woods, and I wanted it to be out in the field so everyone could see because he came in the shower and helped me wash it out and I wanted everyone to know he loved me." "Holy shit!' the young adult exclaimed, "you and Lessen were separated at birth Why didn't you just pull a forty-four magnum and get the dude to dance while you whistled the tune?" "Freedom of choice," the boy said, "there isn't much in the church, so I made it a priority." "I'd sure like to know his options after your `I had a dream' speech," Dave whistled. "There's a number no mathematician could do a thing with." "So you know it worked, then?" the boy said, and Dave didn't know him well enough to tell whether the child was being disingenuous or not. Maybe someday he would, and that thrilled him as much as the silky-smooth pubescent body panting and arching gently as his hands roamed over the exquisitely soft tautness of his belly and developing teen chest. "How fast did it work?" the adult continued with his quizzing, adding: "you know, to the nearest second or two.' "Cripes, I don't know," the boy replied to the voyeur, "it had to be in the hundreds." "It must have been a long walk to the rectory," the artist observed. "Or, we could have walked slowly," the maths whiz noted. "Did it really happen right away?" Dave wanted to know. "Yes," the boy said. "I needed significant counseling so we talked for an hour, then it occurred to me that only by knowing a sin could I feel grace from freeing myself from its evil clutches and degenerate influence." "Society needs perverts like archer's need targets," Dave commented in a friendly whisper, only beginning to re-accustom himself to the magnitude of sensations that resulted from molesting a welcoming young male. "What did you talk about?" Dave asked. "He started with a disclaimer," the boy answered, "you know, telling me anything we talked about was outside anything to do with the church, that there was nothing professional involved, and that he wanted to ask me a lot of questions, but that I could go if it got uncomfortable, with no questions asked. When he was satisfied I was there of my own free will he started quizzing me. He asked if anyone had really touched me while I was taking a shower. I told him the dream was made up, and that I'd seen something while I was out playing Tarzan the Younger, and I wanted to talk to him about that, not any dream." "When did he get you naked?" Dave asked. "When I told him how the boy I spied on undressed the man he was with," the thirteen year old answered. "He was interested in the details, because they could help him draw conclusions as to whether their act was a mortal sin, or merely a temptation leading to a lesser violation of ecclesiastical law." "I take it when he came to his conclusion," the older male said, "it was spot-on." "It couldn't have been otherwise," the boy noted, "because we got every detail right -- I was spying from like six feet away." "And...?" "He deemed it a technical transgression that should be taken under advisement " "Thus freeing the souls of two people he never met," Dave said, arching his eyebrows at mysterious ways, in general. He liked Nordstrom but felt since the FBI spy case, and the failure of the priest to somehow notify the authorities, in the name of global security over an individual's assumption of secrecy, the institution should be denied tax exemption for the extremity of its anti-Americanism. [The bible is rife with vengeance and life is hollow and frustrating until you serve the cold dish, individual or nation. In language that is easier to understand, it's okay to be pissed on, but you do need to dry off.] "Nordstrom," Dave whispered as the boy began shaking in his arms, "what was the correlation between what you saw happening in the woods and Father Yen?" "Not too much," the boy said, "I'd already dreamed up the fake dream. But I think it helped getting my nerve up, because the boy I saw was really nervous while they were talking, but after he pulled his underpants down while the man knelt watching him, he relaxed and they lay on their backs together and he let the man do anything he wanted and they talked while they were getting excited and pretty soon the boy was inventing ways to touch the man, and after it happened they whispered for a long time, and the boy -- he was about eight -- wasn't nervous and they were making another date as they got dressed. So," Nordstrom continued, "that was proof that the weirdness thing was only skin deep. Meantime, I had a crush on Father Yes from second one of minute one and I wasn't the lone ranger. I heard other kids murmuring and one said `shower'. I was just another kid on the team as far as looks go, so I knew I had to start using my brain. I came up with my `dream' story for confession, then the day after I spied in the woods something clucked and I stopped at the church after school and he took me to the rectory. He called my mom, then took me upstairs." By accord Dave slowly released the young teen and they again sat side by side catching their breaths. I'm trying to catch mine, too. Randy has been here most of the day playing computer games, and stayed on alone after Samantha left. His body is lyrics in perfect harmony, silky skin and enough fat to sculpt his warm belly as delicate as a young teen's breasts. Every curve in playboy, with hot baby skin. He is totally accepting, plays and we chat happily as I'm desensitizing him. I took him into the bathroom briefly and we made out for a few minutes. He kisses avidly and it's beyond comprehension how that preteen mouth and lively tongue might one day feel. Also, seeing him naked, leaning back against the bathroom wall, legs spread in the classic position most boys assume naturally, and the ones who are taught always repeat. Then being naked with him. He stayed an hour after I finished with him, chatting and learning to play solitaire. He's a specimen boy, neither bold nor uptight; mostly mellow, partly playful, bright, which is a refreshing contrast with Samantha, the princess of the inner circle of charm, but not quick. I invited him to come live here, just mentioning the idea. I could use a houseboy, and his family is virtually next door. He was over with Kira, emblematic of danger in small packages with her lightest honey gold skin and round, solemn face. I got on Randy's case a month or so ago over teasing her, and for that or some other reason, he's knocked it off and now she dotes on him as she always has on Samantha. Being nice to his cousin might play dividends well into the realm of fantasy, and I'll return to my underlying thesis which is that they could be sleeping together now, and, assuming he was nice to her in a general way, no harm, no foul. She's being denied this by superstition and taboo sold as products. "You children go in the bedroom and lock the door if you want to that," is the only reprimand an experimenting couple should ever hear, with caveats against intruding on normal activities. Kira and Randy may grow up to be fat and uninteresting, not to put too fine a point on it, this may be the only chance they have to express an entire side of their lives, and, while it's one you can live without, as most fat people do, it's the same empty frustration you get from not avenging yourself on those who've severely abused you, by act or omission, for extended periods of time (as the world of Allah has abused the country in which I was born.). All one need keep in mind is the libertine lives the emptiest possible existence, no hope of any kind, and that we're human, controlled by reason, not animals and slaves to instinct. And reason does not say never, ever, how could that be reasonable? it says carefully and rarely. Of course, there'd be nothing rare about a developing Randy sleeping with a four-year-old Kira every night, but if you read it that she's one of a very small group of partners you understand my slant on the issue. Molesting an inexperienced boy is like playing with a kitten, only softer and silkier. And you do it in the same way, a few minutes here, a few more two visits later, ten minutes, after three visits, and so on. If you hold a kitten more than ten or fifteen seconds, it gets restive, and if you still try to hold it, anxious. At it's first twitch, you release the animal, then it will always like being held, or at least not object, and you can hold it longer and longer, if, for some reason would be inconceivable to me, you wanted to. Randy knows the door is never locked; there's not the slightest pressure; he's a good kid, I've known him for years, I now live next door to him, and he's in control as to whether he visits in the first place, whether he stays when the others leave, and what happens if he stays. I'm rubbing this in because it's important. There's no conceivable way his life would be influenced, even if it was open knowledge in town, by what goes on between us, while it's made substantially better by our friendship, whether he's my boy toy, or not. It's a refrain in a minor key, both on its positive and negative sides. It adds, when played with discipline, texture to the music of life, and of and by itself, is capable of taking away nothing; will not be missed from the orchestra. Vastly less fuss, that's the place to start, eventually sanctioning alternative relationships to remove any legacy stigmatism. Every professional involved in any abuse case should assess on the bases of force and coercion, and if it isn't evident, go on to a case where it is. Save the really bad ones, the fourth grader huddled in the corner of the playground, and if a kid's skipping rope with the others, any rumors probably means she's getting more out of life than her (or his) playmates. It's interestingly emblematic that the finest pyramid in the world, by a hundred times, is the monstrous edifice in south central India devoted to little boy's with big penises. It stands, new looking, carved to a higher standard, by far, than any other similar structure, as proof in stone that an alternative society can sustain. That they were some odd thousands of times happier than we are, isn't the point. The fact that they disprove every word and thought on sexual taboo, is. A thought that should be an utter delight to any pedophiles reading this story is as follows: what if the carvings are not lewd exaggerations? It fits neatly with my theory on excessive oral sex: what if little boys of that culture, cute little seven year olds, had eight-inch penises jutting high between their soft thighs and against their creamy bellies? Just picture then cumming like a young horse in the hands of a pretty little brown-eyed sister, and the image is more or less complete. Now I'm going around carving temple art, as if I need another feather in my cap. Back to Randy, and not making a pussy of a kitten. No furtive, incomplete quickies. No domination, none at all. No romantic questions or commentary. No quizzing or creepy questions. No pressure. Nothing enabling him as an effeminate. Some stuff that a lot of guys like to do once in awhile. That's the whole pyramid. A lot of arcing suddenly in the essays. Arcing is bringing a character or situation back repeatedly in the course of a story, but guess what: first, Linden now claims Melissa took the camera, he found it in her backpack, and is bringing it back, second, I ran into the one boy I thought I had once molested, in any true sense of the word, now in his thirties. We spent half an hour talking about South Water Caye in the old days. The third example's on me. The watches I thought were improperly set, were set correctly. So it's typical bird-brained artist, not typical Belize -- a rare reversal of this nature. As an excuse, I asked Andrew three times if he was sure his watch was accurate before I set the computer and microwave oven clocks, and then, as with the wet road, jumped to the wrong conclusion when their clocks agreed with each other. Mind-set it's called. Very dangerous. Another example is when Roman, my efficient helper when I was laid up, stole Samantha's bike. I happed to be standing at my bedroom window and saw him go under the house less than a minute before she found her brand-new bike was gone. If I hadn't happened to see him, I would have blamed Marvin, a notorious thief who lived across the road, and who has reportedly stolen four bikes from my house as well as other valuables. I used to find him sleeping in my outhouse at the old place, and provided him a roof and meals at various times, never doing or suggestion anything. In fact, off all the boys who've stolen things, I've never touched one, and I have had sex with the boys I can trust at least six inches at midday. If I feel guilt over anything in the past, it's not becoming active with Linder. Maybe it would have made a difference, but, at the time, I had two juvenile males and I've never been interested in running a boy farm. Could one orgasm have changed his life? Possibly. Meantime, he's got lots of time to let his good side re-emerge and nothing is more problematic than trying to judge how slightly deviant kids will mature. This was one of Gran's essential messages, and, at age 102, with scads of nieces and nephews, in addition to her own large family, and as an inveterate reader, she knew as much as anyone. She'd seen remarkable changes, both ways, between children and adults, but I do wonder if her advice would apply to our age, with its profound levels of subliteracy. My guess is today's dumb kids are going to stay dumb, and probably too dumb to be fun. That's why I write so many essays. I did a little soul-searching and summing up today. Kira was asleep on the end of the bed, Randy was smoking through the "Battery Charge" demo. Samantha had conked out on the dining room table. Sim just brought me a fresh stash, I had plenty of cigarettes, and I tried to estimate how my list of toys would compare to my peers. To again quote Tiger Woods: "When I was eleven I had the pretties girlfriend you ever saw, got straight As, and won thirty-two tournaments. Life's been uphill ever since." Man, is it ever cool to be fifty-six and have the cute girlfriend, six novels, plus, and to pay for others to go to school. If I yielded to the siren call of Modesty, I'd be lovable -- enough is enough for one lifetime. I hope there will be more sex in upcoming essays. Writing novels is hideously hard work and it would be nice to indulge in the tawdry and salacious while I catch my breath. "You handled me really well," the boy, now breathing normally, said with a shy smile, "I wanted to feel you naked against me, at first, but then I remembered you had a hairy chest, and Father Yen was like a little boy, so I wanted to wait so it could be a separate experience, especially after you'd been with me for a few minutes." "Two more peas, same pod," the adult said, "Lessen had the same idea. We made half a ceremony of it. That was at the point I was going all out for him, trying to haul him bodily out of his own way. He whispered about it, I yielded, and it's probably where I should have said No." "Was it your first time together?" Nordstrom asked. "Yes," the man said. "At first he wanted it to push his boner against my erection, but when I was half naked, he changed his mind, and I knelt on the carpet of the motel room floor as he put his hands behind his neck and wriggled against me." "Did it feel nice to you?" the boy asked. "I was more into looking at him," the man whispered, "and I think the physical sensation was probably more intense for him even though he felt nothing but hot against me." "Did your penis touch his belly?" the experienced child wanted to know. "We pushed against each other," the man recalled, "but we were still in our slacks and underwear, so it was just hinting." "How long did you stay on the floor like that?" the thirteen year old wanted to know. "Half an hour or so," the artist said. "How'd he end up freaking out if you took so much time with him?" Nordstrom asked. "He'd been kidnapped from a RV center when he was nine," the teacher explained, "the bikers had a couple of twelve year old boys with them, but there were over twenty of them. They took him to a slave camp and held him for a week." "That might have an effect," Nordstrom mused sympathetically. "They were call the Lesser Shadows," Dave explained, "the leader wrote math textbooks and he had a geometry-based ritual were each biker stood at a certain distance from a barn, a certain moment before sunset, and if his shadow didn't conform to the formulae, he had to ride off into the sunset for at least a month." "I hope they had a bad cook," the thirteen year old said, glad to hear a light note in his master's voice that seemed to foreshadow an alternative kidnapping. "His mother killed the boy and stuffed the bird," Dave said, "she was a fiend, incarnate, domineering, stupid, and loud enough to alarm anyone hiking under the wall of a canyon. She cooked worse than she was, and made him eat half-burned peas, which are as ugly as they are nauseating. They'd trailed the Atwaters out from a mall, where they'd noted the discrepancy between boy and beast. They let the air out of a tire of their camper, knowing that at mid-day they'd find him changing the wheel. They scooped him right from under the old lady's nose, and gunned up to a hundred so he wouldn't feel like jumping off. They were as gentle as they could be, but they took him back to their camp and raped him. The boy's took him first, then the lesser shadows, then the older guys. Only two adults penetrated him, but he knelt in front of the others, so it was from zero to maximum overdrive in two hours." "Did they play with him before they started raping him?" the younger male wanted to know. "First, they fed him, French toast, and eggnog" the teacher explained to his student, "then, yes, they showed some videos of other boys they'd abducted, adding a neat touch by beginning each sequence with a minute or two of the victim's mother." "What was he thinking by that time?" the boy asked. "He said it was desensitization at the rate of a forgetful sky diver's descent." "You know what?" the boy asked. "What?" Dave replied. "Don't take this the wrong way," the thirteen year old said, but we're not using a parachute, we're using a hot-air balloon." "Interesting," his teacher remarked guardedly. "It was so close while I was standing in front of you," the boy said, "now here we are sitting side by side, you dressed, me still in my shorts." "That you can be polite about it," the man laughed, "is more than remarkable, almost awesome, because the analogy is perfect. We talk and rise, then stop talking, and settle, only to talk and rise, again, exactly paralleling what happened when I was behind you. Ergo, we get not only multiple, but parallel views rather than a quick descent back to earth." "That's what I meant," the boy said, relieved, because a gas balloon goes up and stays up until you let the stuff out." "Choosing between hot air and gas is going to keep me up all night," Dave said. "I'll be enjoying the views," the boy said, making sure the man loved him as much as he loved the man. They did get naked. Dave took his shirt off as they sat on the log, exposing his tawny, lightly matted chest. He stood and the bare-chested boy took his hand. They climbed, finding the romantic touch quite practical when it came to Maine boulder beaches, from the "beach" to a shelf of grass at the verge of the pine trees. Sheltered from the light breeze, wildflower dotting the grass, insects humming as ever, they knelt close. Both displayed, and they moved together until their arching chests touched, the delicate child gasping at the rawness of the lightning jetting from his swollen nipples as he swayed against the rugged matting of his mature master. "You can call me `Lessen" if you want," the boy whispered. "My nickname for him was `Sennen"," the teacher noted. "Did you talk while this was happening in the motel?" the boy asked. "Yes," the man said, "he described what had happened with the Lesser Shadows, taking a nap with the little boys so they could get him ready for the adults, you know, by talking to him. They'd both been kidnapped and raped so they calmed him down from being snatched away from his mother's tire and zoomed off at full speed. By the time he went into the sanctuary to watch the videos, he was nervous and excited but not afraid, except for it hurting a little, which both boys said was a small price to pay." "I've been thinking about you that way, even with your shorts still on," Nordstrom said, "wondering how much it will hurt." "The power of suppository thinking," Dave said. "We'll give that a big, hairy miss. With all these rocks, you'd have an excuse to be stiff-legged when we get back to town, but there's stiff-legged and there's stiff-legged, and wise eyes that know the difference." "How long was Lessen stiff after being with the Lesser Shadows?" the boy asked curiously. "He had two young boys," the adult said, "both of them ejaculated inside him before the youngest and smallest of what was a slim and fit group, to begin with, followed the boys, and only one of the full-grown males mounted. He'd been picked by drawing straws." "There should be a law against not kidnapping a kid in a situation like that," the boy said. Acting, it seemed permanently as one, they rose and returned, romantically, to their seat overlooking the calm cove. "That was even closer," the boy said, "do you know that seventeen forty-ninths is thirty-five percent?" "Just that madness divided by insanity equals love," the adult answered "Which crazeth the young, and, alike, the younger, yet," quoth the mathematician to the athletic male at his right. "It is kind of a numbers game," the boy allowed, "the altimeter goes up, and then the number drop and we're friends sitting on an old, gray log that should have been a telephone pole." "Driftwood makes me a landlubber," the teacher said, "I mean, if so much of it's out there, drifting, and it's so big and heavy, and so hard to see, aren't the results inevitable?" "I think the inevitable results of an altimeter reading zero is a crash," Nordstrom said. "And we prevent that by...?" the man asked. "Talking so he won't write another essay," the boy winked. "Character," the man murmured like a drama coach prompting from the wings. "Sorry," the boy said, "doing what we are. I'm lucky with my mom, but Lessen wasn't. If there hadn't been an accident, what do you think?" "That could make a guy take up smoking," the man observed. "I don't think he would have been okay. I could reach him, especially after that night in the motel, but Shady reached further. He was too tractable with me, and too wild on the outside. Drinking, friends who reeked of cool; it was hard to see where he was, much less where he was going. `They all find something, none of them starves, no one starves,' that's a line from "Death of a Salesman". His mother had him for eleven years before I got my mitts on him, so he was a forlorn hope more or less from the get-go, in spite of, as I said, playing the compliant, responsive kid when he was with me." "Booze at that age must be rough," Nordstrom said. "Alcohol has a tradition of pleasure behind it," the master said, "and to either succumb to addiction, and act out, or be denied the pleasure for life is the definition of the space between ye rock and ye hard place," the man agreed, "plus there was lots of pot, all the time, and ye knife of ye combat vintage." "You didn't kill him on purpose, did you?" the boy asked. "I would have used less fire," the man replied. "You're so amazing," Nordstrom mused, half to himself. "I mean I thought Father Yen was cool because he wasn't a sycophant and was a realist, but that was all kind of passive on his part. Reacting to my questions, and half the time agreeing with my view, or being vague and saying things like you can't disprove the existence of this or that. But your mind isn't trained," the boy went on, "the balloon isn't tethered, it drifts, but somehow you do paddle it around up there, which is helpful when it comes to not being a flake." "You rowed us out here, champ," Dave responded, "so at least you know what you're talking about." The master's reply struck the boy as funny. There'd been enough silliness though, he thought to himself, but it wasn't a case where thinking did much good. So he stood, looked nervously at his teacher and then moved between the bare-chested adult's legs. "I want to feel you against me, again," he whispered. The boy kicked his sandals off as the adult unbuckled him and dropped his shorts, placing them on the log. His hand's went to Nordstrom's waist and he molested the panting boy for several long minutes, then, as the child displayed, pulled his underpants to his feet and removed them The naked boy spread his legs, the cobbles of the beach finally seeming a plus, and his master leaned to him. The thirteen year old was fully adult in size, his baby pink penis uncircumcised. Dave held the shaking youth's hip with his left hand, and gently pulled back the boy's foreskin with his right. Nordstrom gasped as he had at his first carnal touch, and, when he was eased in the crinkly matting of the athlete's chest, and moved slowly up and down, began hissing and mewing uncontrollably as his legs shook and he panted for breath. Sensing the fast rise of tension in the young teen, the man eased his hard, swollen glans from his chest and stood, pulling the naked child strongly too him. "Did Father Yen cum off first when you were together in the rectory?" the man asked the panting boy in his arms. "Yes," the boy whispered. "I want the same," Dave said, "I want you to watch me cum." "He used to let me be the first sometimes," the boy said, calming with a few hiccups as they returned to ground zero.. "I'd like that if it ever happens with us," the adult said, "but we're violating enough standards and practices, so that one's sacred." "Thanks," the boy murmured, "it made a big difference my first time, because I, you know, sort of cooled down real fast when it did happen with me." "That was Lessen's specialty," the artist said, "hot going in, cold coming out. He even called me a faggot once, but, half way to the door he stopped so fast he fell on a throw rug, and by the time he reached the top of the stairs he was back to his full seven-inch display." "His what?" the boy asked. "He was with the bikers for a week," the master reminded his student, "he grew more than is ordinary, and earlier than is ordinary, and, not to tell tales our of school, he had more semen than two normal adults." "So you really didn't kill him," the student repeated, amazed he could speak at all as the memory of the sensation of his uncircumcised penis against his master's chest half exploded through his trembling loins, causing his boner to swell as his teacher stared down and he leaned back as far as he could while spreading his legs widely. Dave reached across and masturbated the wanton young teen, bringing him fast and close, then again hugging the panting child to his bare chest. He stood and the boy unbuckled him, and in a moment they were standing gently together finding they matched perfectly, the slim pink penis with the rougher, thicker erection of the adult, measuring within a quarter inch. "I think we traded the balloon for something harder and faster," Nordstrom noted. "It will happen for both of us," the man said, softly, "I'm not trying to string you along. I'm way out of control, now, myself, but I learned to get past the point of no return with Lessen, and have reversal of fortune, which is the most genteel way I can say it, rule the hour, but Rof, as I've come to know him, is a kindly puppy and knows when to sleep so boys can be boys.." "When you're an adult does it make you feel like a kid to do this?" the boy asked. "In a word," Dave concurred, "if it's like this, willing, private, and comfortable, with plenty of time. If it's sneaky, quick, and incomplete, you'd end up feeling like a dirty old man, even at your age." "Will I like touching little boys when I'm mature?" the child wanted to know. "Everyone wants to," the man replied, "but the wages of sin is death, which is puzzling, because death is also the wage of virtue, but, moving on, the answer is Yes. You may want it already with a child, or find one at any time. The biggest gift out here on this island is that now you know, from having a second partner, that what you have with your priest isn't a fluke, but just a minor part of life that can be shared from time to time with anyone who feels the same way you do. That's all that counts. How old that partner is, or their sex, are simply not figures in the emotional equation: it's how well the you know each other and what happens during the other ninety-eight percent of the relationship between to people that counts. When you're my age, you won't favor an eight year old over a ten year old because you like little boys, you'll favor the one you know the best and like the best. Women marry men in an age span of fifty years, and if they marry the one they know the best and like the best, they're probably making the best choice. If you were eighteen, I'd like this with you, and I'd like it if you were six. If you were over eighteen, I wouldn't like it with you, because I'm not a homosexual. Even at your age, I wouldn't like sleeping with you every night and waking up with you every morning, as I would with the right female. "I kind of feel that way, too," the boy noted. "I'd like it sometimes, but if we lived together, I'd want my own room, not just bed." "If you stay at my place, you can have your own wing," the artist observed, "but that's a pie-crust promise; there's a whole lot more interesting stuff out there than a premature relationship with an older guy, or, probably, anyone, and, as long as you don't let your philosophy of mixing sperm and boy become too convenient, you'll have exciting stories to tell, and, if they're good enough, I might forget I'm not gay and something might happen." "I hope we do," the boy said. "If Lessen was still alive, I'd be visiting him," the man said, "even with all that happened. But that's fairly unusual. When you move on, you usually do, to new people as well as a new place. I think that's the way it should be. If less people ran up huge bills on cheap long-distance telephone calls to people essentially out of their lives, the country would be a better place. You should engage locally, not dwell on the distant. You're here with me, now, and not dwelling on your priest. That makes it nice and is no slur on him. If you pulled out your telephone and spent an hour talking to him, that would be different." The boy grinned. "What if we spent most of it talking about you?" Nordstrom asked, "because we do when we're together. He quizzes me, but the only exciting thing was when you made me dig those holes while you did your wild-west imitation of a wolf with his foot in a trap." "Nobody's perfect," Dave responded in a mock whine. "Guess again," the boy said, cuddling close and raising his face for their first kiss. His left hand went to Dave's rugged face, pulling him to his mouth, his right, avoiding the man's scaring, pulled at the adult's left shoulder. Dave eased from the log, bending to the avid boy, and stripped out of his shorts and briefs, yielding fully to the welcome in the boy's strong hands and coming fully against the child's naked body as the by swirled and danced his tongue, seeming to want to lick his partner entirely inside his hot, urgent mouth. As the naked adult pressed between his widely spread legs, the boy broke the kiss and lowered to the rigid penis at his smooth, boyish chest. He licked the wet phallus, then, as his master's hands held him gently he began experimenting with having an adult's penis in his mouth. They spent the boy's initial tries adjusting their position, then, when they were comfortable, the adult displayed as the boy moved vigorously and steadily up and down on his master's long, thick shaft, taking it half in his mouth as his hands worked skillfully at masturbating the now shaking young man. The tableau lasted five minutes, then, as it had before, love and happiness -- the kind you don't want to end -- overcame the heat and lust of the moment, they slowed with each other, and finally returned to the essence of their friendship, which was sitting comfortably and talking to each other. "You were a little hesitant at first," Dave said, "have you taken Father Yen that way?" "He says priests are allowed to walk in the Garden of Eden, they don't own it," the boy answered, "we only did things with our hands. I've never even kissed him, and I don't want to." "Now that he can't own you the way we just were, will he let you use your mouth on him?" the man wanted to know. "Now there's a theological issue worth thinking about," the boy said, "about as Jesuit as you can get. To have not dominated me: does it convey the right to accept me?" "I'd carry a big bottle of Advil to a session like that," Dave said. "You've got that right," Nordstrom grinned, tracing a finger over his lover's scar. "Would you like to have him in your mouth, if he changes his principles?" the man wondered. "Yes," the boy whispered softly. "If for no other reason, and I think it would be sensual, than to thank him for being cool, not greedy." "I hope you figure something out together," Dave said. "What happened just now," the boy mused in a whisper, "make me want to go up and lie in the grass, on my back, with the back of my legs against your chest." The man was also in a contemplative mood. "If that happened between us," he said, "maybe your father would compromise on what you want with him and let it happen without hindrance from the pseudo-philosophy part and parcel of all religions." "In his name," the boy said from that magic land where no one could guess if he was being droll or was innocent. "Let your will be done," Dave added, "but that's something that never happened with Lessen, and will probably only happen in my life, so I don't want slam-bam-thank-you-man." "How far did you go with the other boy?" Nordstrom wanted to know. "In this case," Dave answered, "I was a fellow pea in a pod with Father Yen. I left a lot for others, and should have left more. It was hard, because he was greedy, and wanted it all, but I outweighed him by a hundred pounds, so we stuck to our own small ritual, with all the world to teach him the rest; more to do with what I perceived as kindness and reason than any philosophical take on the matter." "Was your ritual always the same?" the boy asked. "Yes," the man said. "We'd dress in the same slacks and shirts we wore on the way to the diving clinic; same everything. We'd reenact what happened in the room, deliberately, didactically, so he'd learn that consistency and redundancy -- a formula -- becomes much more a part of you than anything that happens willy-nilly and here and there, when and whenever." "And he wasn't satisfied?" the boy wondered. "His mother always made him hurry at things," Dave said, "he was used to performing at top speed, which meant he needed now things to perform, all the time. I tried limiting him to one video game at a time, play it through, then go on to the next. That helped and he was beginning to respond, but I only spent a few hours a week with him. With more exposure, there might have been that rarest of human conditions, a sea change; an entire rejection of one set of ways and values for another, assumed with passion. Small chance, realistically, but it could have happened." "I don't want it with you," the boy said, "I don't want even a micro-change until my legs are against your chest and you're looking into my eyes, and I can feel what's happening inside me. At that point, you can freeze us for a million years and I won't get bored." "I'd never make it that long without those eyes," the man noted, and again they came gently together, lips and tongues promising that once and awhile it would be nice to sleep together, all night long. "What was your ritual?" Nordstrom asked after some minutes. "A long talk," the man said. "I'd quiz him about things he wrote in his letters, and what happened in the week after he was hijacked from the campground, then we'd come to a pause and he'd say he wanted to take a shower. That's what happened in the motel. Not very original, but I'd had enough of the ad hoc and extemporaneous to last our the year, so, acceptable." "Did he stand against the wall of the shower so you couldn't see him?" Nordstrom asked. "Why, is that what you'd do?" the artist inquired. "I think so," the boy said, "it would be so awesome hearing a man opening the bathroom door, first, then the shower door or curtain, you know, a minute later, knowing he was going to see how your body was, then almost watching the fear run down the drain with the water as you feel it melting away from what he'd do with you, then the last lump melting and falling off, like ice when you defrost the refrigerator, when you feel the touch of him against your bottom or your back and know the adult behind you has a hard penis, just like you do." "It was more romantic than that," Dave said, repaying the boy for leaving him between the rock and hard place a time or two. "That means you talked to him, once the door was closed and he knew you were really with him," the boy responded "He was playing Shy Baby," the master said, "the same game he'd played in the bedroom when we took his shirt off. Then he continued it by stripping and hiding in the shower, water off. "The wolf shouldn't look at Little Peter," Lessen whispered as the door clicked shut. "Then Little Peter shouldn't show the wolf how soft and tender his little boy body is," the wolf growled softly. "Good wolf's are dogs," the naked ten year old said, "and dogs are okay, but when they see things, they get excited and you have to tell them to go away, then that gets them more excited, and then they're wolfs again, and it's more exciting than ever, so Little Peter takes his shirt of in private with the wolf, and then runs away and hides, and the wolf finds him and looks at him, with no clothes on, and sees everything he wants, almost, and then it gets very hard for the little boy to drive the wolf away because if the wolf is this excited just seeing him all naked, what will happen when the wolf comes up behind him and uses his fingers to touch him? How will the boy ever tell the wolf to go away, after that starts happening? He might not even want to. Or he might go into a trance and dream it's a man standing behind him in the shower, and the man knows the small pink body just in front of him has been in the hands of wolves, before and those wolves has had him for hours and hours, time after time, and that Little Peter has been wet from those other wolves, and so the man doesn't have to teach the little boy anything, turning the man into a wolf that drives away all the others, who are now mere hounds." "You've never really shared what happened," Dave said, "and you don't have to; it's just that if you ever wanted to, this might be the time and place. Or you can let it go at: `They molested me, you jerk, mind your own business.'" "That's more how I feel about the old lady," the boy said into the wall of the shower, `She's a freak, okay, what's it to you?' Then you'd come back with `those burned peas'll do it every time,' and I could hate you as much as I hate the rest of the world that didn't take me away from that ludicrous bitch before I learned to wet myself." "It would be a change of subject to tell me what happened after they parked the bikes," the twenty-six-year-old teacher said. "They'd built the place up pretty well," the boy said. "Mal, he drove the bike I was on, handed me a comb, and carried me into the small cabin. He told me they were going to rape me, and the boys inside would tell me about it, then pushed me through the door to where Nicky and Pierre were sitting on the floor playing videos. They had a third controller, so I sat down on the rug between them and started playing along. They told me not to worry; that the Lesser Shadows like to pretend they were persons of the dawn of time, before the world was spoiled by good, but that the big, bad rape would be a torchlight ceremony with everyone dressed way cave. They showed me their costumes after awhile, and gave me mine so they could look at me in it. They had lots of food and eggnog, but told me about what happened at sunset, so I could only eat it until I had my mother's cooking out of my mouth, then we'd eat Mexican food, and not much of it. They both had looked really good in their cave suits and said I did, too, so that was the reason for it. They talked about hunger as an abstraction, when to me it was mother, drunk, again, for the odd two or three days, but I got the message, and seeing so many cute guys when we arrived, they were all wearing tee shirts and cutoffs, was another reason, even in my innocence of such things, to think in terms of being a little hungry, some of the time, instead of fat, all the time, which was their unofficial motto." "Yet it wasn't a cooking school," the older male said. "Good food and being away from my mother was all I could think about at first," the boy said, "but then we tried the costumes on just for a minute, and the subject kind of changed." "Good," the man said. "How did I know that?" the boy rejoined. "I'd been hauled aboard a Yamaha with an engine for an earth mover and they said it was a hundred, and it was like a hundred and forty or something, with sparks on the turns just so I wouldn't go letting my mind wander, then into the parking lot, and a lot of guys standing around to look, like I was a package from some fairy queen, then into the cabin where the boys are playing video, all in say, ten minutes, so I didn't know when the subject changed whether they were going to eat me or just keep me on a hook in the kitchen for when they needed the blood of an Englishman, because I'm English and my mother is five time more English than the queen." "It must have been nice, under the circumstances, to know what you didn't want to talk about," Dave observed. "You make everything funny," the boy said to his tiles, "and it's just so you can be a bad wolf and look at my body, and think about what I looked like in a caveman suit, and think what a whole bunch of young guys without an eating disorder in the group, also dressed a la the cave, looked like when they began to get interested in what I look like even before they took my suit off, and their suits off, and we were huddled together under the torches for over an hour while they raped me." "I'm still looking at you," the teacher said, "and wondering how you felt when you let them see your penis." "And you want to see me the way I was with them, too," the boy said sourly. "I just want to see if there's one side to your schizoid behavior that makes sense," Dave responded. "Maybe it's open carnality, total nakedness with each other, you wet from me, me wet from you, you telling me every secret of what happened under the torches, me asking all kinds of questions, because I don't have any stories to trade for yours, and you finally turning around, when you're ready, so we can watch each other jerk off and you can watch me cum off on your belly, in private, one-on-one. If you're going to slip from Happy Peter to disgruntled victim, then I'll leave you in peace and shower later, no harm, no foul." "How can I tell?" the boy asked, "until I feel your hands on me, just above my hips, really softly and gently, and down low enough so you'll know my secret, and why I'd be standing this way even if we weren't playing a game, and I was really just a scared, innocent boy." "And when the wolf touches the wraith, what does it turn into, long-legged and attractive as it is." "I'm not much of a boy most of the time," Lessen said, "so maybe I could try that." "And how long would that last?" the man asked. "Until the wolf turns out to be the one that's a wraith, and reappears as a stick without a brain." "Well," the adult mused, "if that happens it won't take him but a second to know where he'd like to make contact with your soft-skinned, pubescent body." "You'd like to see it all covered with young-man sperm," the boy taunted, "just like I did, because they had a video camera over my head looking down my back, and I could watch what they were doing with me while I was lying on the bench in the main lodge and one after another came up and knelt behind me with one of the boys at his hip, and it was a twenty-seven inch monitor, so I saw all the details of what I looked like and that's how you want to see me." "How did you see looking at yourself that way," the teacher asked, ignoring the child's petulance out of a complete lack of alternatives. "It was all the way up on my shoulders," the boy whispered, his voice finally settling into the sick-sounding husk, "and on the back of my neck and in my hair. There was a thick white puddle at the base of my spine and the boys used it to keep their hands wet for the bikers." "That wasn't the first time they raped you?" Dave interjected, hoping a few seeds of reality would keep the boy focused. "I was on my knees most of the time," the boy said, "but at first they did it inside me, so the other would get excited. That happened while I was on my hands and knees, but they had rented an extra camera and monitor, so I could watch while I got molested." "I knew there had to be a sane cult out there, somewhere," the man said. "They didn't worship what happens at the end," Lessen responded, "but they thought it was artistic, which they defined, perhaps a bit conveniently, as beauty lacking symbolism, beauty created for it's own sake." "There's always a few in every crowd," Dave noted. "They kind of won me over," the boy continued, deciding not to waste time figuring out whether the deadpan voice behind him was serious or off on one of its droll sidebars, "because a cute boy accepting a cute young man isn't weird and ugly like pictures of bathroom stuff would be, it's somehow on a higher plane." There, let him chew on that and see how funny he'd be next time. "You were away from your mother," Dave said, "so I don't think you were fit to judge things like that. You probably thought French toast and eggnog were gifts of the food gods, and they're common, so what plane you were on, artistically speaking, having never been on one before that didn't involve the likes of Peter Pan, is not something you were, or are, capable of evaluating impartially." Speaking of sex and art, Fidel dropped by this evening. He's my "persistent catamite" and the only boy I've raped. I have to turn him away, frequently, otherwise he'd be here every night. Do I dump him as I was? No, I let him hang around once a week and we jerk off together in the bathroom about every two or three weeks. This evening there was a new variation, notably aesthetic. Because of the blustery weather, the front door was closed and the shutter were closed, obscuring the living room from any visitor. I invited him in, at first saying I didn't want to play, as our usual activity is with both of us naked in the bathroom, leading to the possibility of suspicious behavior if there was a delay in answering the door. But with the door closed, and the two of us dressed in the living room, the scene was very different. I told him to stay around for awhile while I decompressed from a Herculean day which had started at dawn and would continue until two the following morning. I made tea and burned a bud. I've mentioned my world's-most-comfortable chair, and always wondered if it would be good for having sex. It's a ubiquitous plastic chair with the right, front leg missing. The corner rests on a five-gallon plastic bucket, which serves as a heel rest. Just to the left is a low table, and leaning back against the wall, left arm propped, right foot up, is the next thing to an actually easy chair with a foot rest. Yes, it's passed every test in the comfort department, but would it be good for sex? Read on, and you will find out. The answer is Yes. Fidel, with the door closed, began masturbating as I drank my tea. I put my leg up and began stroking, too. We did that, occasionally leaning forward to look at each other, for about ten minutes. If anyone came, we'd be decent by the time we opened the door, so the comfort level was high. Fidel usually wears long pants, heavy socks and sneakers, and, common here for some reason, several pairs of underwear, boxers, briefs, gym shorts, and a bathing suit. I'm probably exaggerating. It takes him a long time to undress, and dress, so the comfort level usually isn't high. Anyway, this time it was, and we were able to take our time. Sort of like working in a lab rather than a Polaroid, to use an anologic simile, so you won't catch me out there, from the world of photography. So we smoked, drank tea, and masturbated a few feet apart, much like I used to do with males in the saunas of bath houses. Without hurrying, we got excited more quickly than usual, and by the time the tea was half done he was standing over me, and I was boy-hard and waiting for him. I usually try to cum with his sperm on my hand, at my age it helps, and we usually use baby oil with each other and ourselves. This time, since he's totally the aggressor in the relationship, I thought I'd observe and not participate in a mutual cum. I know it all sounds dry and half-academic, but that's only the beginning. Fidel is seventeen, extremely attractive, and nearly wanton as a lover, I wanted to see him naked, but with the privacy situation had to make do, which also led to my accepting him without participating. Instead of sharing his sperming, I stopped jerking off and pulled my shirt high as he began spreading his legs to get close to me. For a moment I sat perfectly still to see if there was any tell-tale motion of the building to the rhythm of his stroking fist, but I felt nothing. My chest and belly look like a boy's, hairless, milk white skin, soft as a young teen's (it's never been half as soft as Randy's). Leaning against my left leg, with my right out of the way, thanks to the modified chair, he was able to hold his glans, which had just emerged, against me just under my ribcage on my right side. He tensed for over a minute while I just looked, hands holding my shirt to my neck. I coaxed him a little, verbally, and he ejaculated for about half a minute, leaving two tablespoons of hot semen in a pool the size of a butterfly. After we'd both looked at it for a few moments, I wet my hand as he finished stroking, and tried to jerk off, but, and here's where it gets interesting, there was so much of his seed on my right palm, it felt bad instead of good, and I went for a towel, easing my erection back into my shorts. Live and learn. I think even our usual baby oil, which is messy and leaves a scent, would have been a distraction, that's how artistic it was. Yes, being naked with him would have been more exciting, he's a beautiful boy, but in art there should be comfort as well as lively engagement, so I take solace in that. A beautiful experience, is a beautiful experience, and if wishing it had been perfect keeps it alive, you have a whole new philosophy to cope with. Fidel and Randy might be something to look forward to. If the younger boy turns out to like sex, a seventeen year old would be more exciting to him than I'd likely be. There are many places he can lead, and I hope none of them are perfect. Fidel is an interesting research subject. While I don't quiz other boys, because of his (gently) aggressive nature, I do ask him questions. He says he has no other partners, and cums off very heavily, so it's likely true. He displays anally, and says he had an older boy inside him when he was younger. He says he'd been with one girl, and is interested in females. This actually says quite a lot. He's a catamite to the extent I once saw him go up and kiss an older boy on the arm, the older boy pushing him gently away. Anyone could have him. He's, as they say here, simple, but low-key and very pleasant, amply attractive with an almost hairless boy's body, works in town much of the time, and yet is partner-free. This coincides with previous commentary on the sparse attendance at border steam baths, where men can take boys at will. It could be summed up that perverts are indeed a rare breed, but that brings up a very thorny question as to whether the majority wants to be perversion-free, or is mandated to be free, and if they want to be free, why? Natural inclination, or indoctrination? Again, thorny, because how do you know unless you've tried it, and what if you'd had a gentle introduction in a bathtub at an early age, how would you feel, then? Another thorn is how, as things open up, those who've held a homophobic or morally-guided position feel about what they missed out on. The more sensitive of these will also dwell on the pleasure and fulfillment, five-percent sexual, they could have given a few boys and girls along the way, yet denied them. That's enough rocks for one snowball. The microwave is the computer of the kitchen. I've never lived with one before and found myself wondering how I got along without it, much as the people wondered how they'd ever gotten along without Mssrs. Roebling. (Opera writers who passed on my drama based on hunting down counterfeit compact discs might consider a musical based on the career of Mrs. Roebling's essential role in this most dramatic event of its time.) The primo luxury, so far, is dawdling over a meal, then reheating it a time or two. It's actually strange to finish a plate of piping hot food. In a perfect world they'd have a magnetron tube on the end of a flex shaft hanging from the ceiling, and you could heat things up without leaving the table, perhaps actually keeping the food hot while you chew simply by holding the transmitter to your cheek. (Where my tongue is.) A universal recipe has never been feasible before, because re-heating food usually means a long wait for a double boiler (and lots of gas), or frying, which adds oil and mashes the food. Now you can dip into your basic rice or pasts, add a chilled sauce, and sprinkle on frozen meat or seafood, add cheese, and it comes out like it had been in a salamander in a hotel kitchen, only probably better. Therefore, two big plastic tubs, one for your basic, another for the sauce, and a smaller one for the meat or seafood in the freezer, and you're in business. Make a huge amount of rice or pasts. It will keep for a day or two at room temperature, so you only need refrigerate a single maximum size plastic bowl. The sauce, with a butter, flour, milk base will keep for days in the refrigerator, and to this you add your vegetables, microwaving the fresh ones in place of blanching or par boiling. Your chicken, meat, or seafood are cooked before the rice and sauce (so you can use the stock), and, when cooled, stored in the smaller plastic bowl in the freezer. When it's time to eat, two or three pot spoons of rice, one or two of the sauce, and a handful of frozen cut-up chicken,, we're talking half a minute, here, and into the nuclear environs for six to ten minutes. It comes out perfect every time, and you can re-heat anytime you want. The only hint I've found is to stir the product stored in the freezer as it congeals, to make it easy to serve. Add a pressure cooker for the meat, rice, and sauce, and about an hour and a half in the kitchen adds up to a dozen or so big servings that can be kept for days or weeks, while your gas consumption is cut by two thirds and your grocery bill by half. (If you don't have a couple of hours to spend in the kitchen every few days, thoroughly re-examine your life.) For tea, the machine heats the beverage, sugar, creamer, and the mug, but not the handle. How cool is that? Ironic, isn't it, that in America the rage is for just the opposite, for fussy little servings, wildly over-packaged in almost indestructible wrapping, and chicken and pork at the price of lobster and shrimp, with everything tasting like minor variations on the Hot-Pockets theme. Burger King wants you to have it your way, but may I suggest my way? The food is so good, that's the difference; so good that the first thing you want to try is making it look better. I don't know if I'm ready for parsley, but at least I'm thinking about it, which I never did with fried leftovers. Now I'm in another dither over the camera. I was a little intimidated about taking time off from the keyboard to really explore it last fall, what with like nine-hundred-thousand words to go, but now things are pretty much up to snuff, so I could take a day here and there. I want to hire a pickup truck and borrow Alex's long step ladder and take pictures from ten or twelve feet off the ground, shooting down from high oblique and reducing distracting elements like wires and cables. Dangriga, like Santa Fe, is rich in vignettes of the curtains in a weathered window variety, but these are rarely photogenic from street level. Another arcing in the essay department. My Chinese watch has moisture under the crystal. What's that all about? I've hardly splashed it while doing Queenie's dishes, and it says Water Resistant. It would be fairly typical to find an otherwise excellent instrument is flawed by some tiny lapse, like a cold solder joint on a circuit board. An infinitesimal more rubber in the seal, and the thing would last for years; without it, maybe not even months. Another example is my refrigerator, a poorly painted Mexican brand. The whole creeping machine is rusting away, while working perfectly. A little more paint, probably fifty cents worth, and instead of lasting five years it would last ten or fifteen. Data and music discs that scratch at the slightest touch are another example. We get a lot of gray-market, factory-seconds, and refurbished merchandise here, adding an element of excitement to shopping for anything that doesn't say Del Monte. The sneakers I bought for Tonton popped the first time he laced them up and the seams of his new pants split, too. In a way, it's a mixed bag because the stuff is pretty dirt cheap, considering the fact we're a hundred miles from nowhere, and with a needle and thread even I can stitch clothes up, better than new, at least. We've repeatedly proven Crazy Glue does not work on sandals that pop in two days, so there's a benefit others probably overlooked. Other benefits are smaller and harder to ferret out. Headphones that sound like talking peanuts just seem like a waste of money, and waterproof flashlights with thin cardboard liners are only interesting as a conversation piece when they light spontaneously, and refuse to blink when you want to see if the fir de lance you spotted the previous day in your outhouse is still there. I saw the snake, the flashlight didn't work, and, I forgot to add, a hurricane was overdue, which is why I bought it in the first place, but otherwise it's a made-up story, except for the cardboard which looked too flimsy to hold a roll of paper towels. One thing's for sure, you have to be a writer to appreciation things like this. Everyone else belongs, legitimately, at Wal-Mart. To touch or not to touch, that was the question. It was not one of art, the beauty of the coltish body leaning with its folded in front of its face, its chest arching perhaps subconsciously in welcome, its boyish bottom raised in more obvious welcome, was natural-beauty, defined to the extent that the most liberal gallery in a liberal city couldn't display photos or other graphics of nude, partially nude, or studied works of children. "Boy Displaying in a Shower" wouldn't hang before the public eye even if the shower door in the image was closed. But not all agreed, and it sounded as if the Lesser Shadows frankly disagreed. Certainly the society who built the most beautiful temple on the planet disagreed. Art galleries should be filled with interesting and attractive man/boy art and boy/boy work in all media. If the girls are squeamish, let them play dolls, boys are the most beautiful, by a tiny margin, anyway. Okay, already, he was beautiful, and seemed to appreciate beauty, so? He was trouble on a stick. The best sentence in the English language describes the frustration of dealing with an abused child, sympathize with him as you will, understand as you can, try as you might. They become warm gelatin, press anywhere, they flowed elsewhere, then, in frustration, try pressing fast, and it merely thinned the gelatin the more. Any place he could talk, the boy would want another place, used to being hit so hard, he hated being touched at all. At one time he'd probably been afraid, now he hated, and was old enough and more than sharp enough to take a touch in the shower in the first place and show up at police headquarters, in the second place. But was art something else? Did it, could it, be the transcendent power, the one place where he could be touched and touched again, touch back, and thus open some kind of sustained dialogue, building instead of skittering? "Jerking off isn't very photogenic," the boy whispered, changing the subject, "not the way it's usually done with you know, your hand going really fast, so Abraham, the art director, had worked with Farro, the choreographer, to come up with something that would work and maintain its artistic dignity when recorded on video tape. Just like "Miami Vice" had no earth-tones, Lesser Shadows had no jerky movements. That's why they'd picked me. I was deemed the cutest boy who'd miss his home the least." "I owe you an apology," Dave mused, "for jumping to conclusions. I felt the planes you spoke of might have been oriented on lust, salacious carnality, and degenerate acting out under a cloak of expedient philosophy and convenient spirituality." "We were under torches," Lessen reminded the older male standing inches behind him in the dry shower. "You could have been under a spell, too," the man said, "they might have bolstered you with LSD." "I never felt anything like that," the boy said, "it was all solid and real, not wavy and vague, they were into it..." "For art," Dave nodded. It was hard to disagree with the principle. Liberal galleries in liberal cities displayed no images of children in any media, society deeming anything below a juvenile's head and shoulders erotic. Of course, there was a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel aspect to the issue. Free, the galleries would display nothing but cute kids by themselves, with other kids, or with attractive adults. Once the shock wore off, this expedient, do-it-yourself art form would choke out legitimate workers interpreting non erotic themes. Yet measured simply by beauty, pleasure, and emotion, the kiddie graphics would dominate, and, if ended up flowers choking weeds, it would also end up a monoculture, and that ground was staked out by the advertising agencies." "No poster boys," the child said to his wall. "But it does make it legitimate," the older male observed. "It should be the way of all flesh, carnality governed by decency, not morality, privacy, not prohibition, and, if that's the way of a peaceful world, and we're not there, then it's up to the artists to lead us there, because the unions are empowering the leftists, who have always been and are today, destructive brutes with boxes for everything from Festive Occasions to Great Writers and Pornography. Their expedient world is not survivable, forcing an alternative which does not exist under contemporary mores. In the real world," the speaker went on, "it does exist, so the Lesser Shadows become artists in reverse, leading from the abstractions of theology and morality to the age-old reality of adults making love with children, particularly, because it's more intellectually based, men making love to young boys." "It's nice to know I've served the advancement of humanity in case the ever re-institute the draft," the ten year old boy said. "What's nice is having lots of evidence proving your involvement," the adult responded. "It's in hi-res," the boy added. "I look pretty foxy." "A sane army would let soldiers have pet boys and boys be barracks pets," Dave noted, "so you may not be out of the woods. If your film is too good, it could swing the paradigm so quickly you'd end up in uniform by the time you're twelve." "In uniform?" the boy asked wryly. Dave smiled at his comic effort but let the comment pass without laughing. Larger issues were on the table, and he'd never worked with his student so well focused. It would be ill-advised to risk the mood with comic relief by responding to, and perhaps encouraging, the droll and witty efforts of the mercurial boy. "What kind of language did they use while they were molesting you," Dave asked. "The writer was a tall Swede named Mex," Lessen said, "he had high ideals on that score. The boys, Nicky and Pierre, clued me in so I wouldn't mess up the sound track. "But that's not to say they were uptight to any extreme degree," Lessen continued, "after all, the name of my film was `Torch Dong'. That was Mex Helgendorf's idea, because it set the stage for an interplay, for trapping the audience with their own assumptions by playing them off against parallel variants. The way it worked was juxtaposing a stone age setting with the music of Strauss, costumes of silk, and the English of an Earl of Oxford. We talked quite a bit and he said he like playing with alternative themes to see if it could be done in an engaging manner, not just as a gimmick like in `Slaughter House Five', where a survivor opens an old door on a battlefield and steps into a party. More subtle. Cave motif, knuckle-dragging persona, but quiet music and gentle words to go with the repeated rape of a little boy." "You might not want to audition for the sequel," Dave suggested, "because if he's into variations on a them his next story may take place in an elegant school where the boys behave like Neanderthal toward the captive male, then rationalize violent behavior by virtue of your previous mode of living." "Doing me worse than my mum?" the boy said, a spontaneous incredulity in his voice that might have deceived another, but his teacher was wise to his retreats into bluster and his adroit footwork under the Blarney Stone. "It was just a thought, Sessen," the adult said, "your relationship with your mother appears to include intensive reading, and you didn't teach yourselves, nor did you learn in the socialist box labeled School; you've never mentioned your father or any other likely mentor, so guess who's left?" "Until a year ago," the naked boy acknowledged, "then I stopped being a toy and became a slave. And I went to the school box, and verily it was not up to my standards, nor those of a clown, and lo the jocketh spoke jock, the cuteth spoke cute, and the fateth spoke not at all, which made the whole campus creepy and eerie Of literature, not of trace, no phrase of rhyme from any face. Lo said I unto myself, verily and forsooth, this is not your place. Self, said I, back to myself, it is badder then worse and shoddier than shoddy, but worse is to be had from the land of toddy. "I meant the old lady, of course," the boy said, his latest dance under the stone leaving Dave weak-kneed at the lightning savagery of his spontaneous genius. A lot of voltage for a bottle. Handle with care. "You had me going for a minute there," the man quoth, "generic critiques, understandably, make teachers nervous." "Wolves make naked boys nervous," the child responded, "because they're immature and don't know if it's just a game to play in a boring motel, or whether the man is feeling things with a rising intensity from looking at the child's smooth body and imagining it on a big screen in hi-def video covered like a snowy mountain here, and a snowy plain, there, and a spring melt well under way with the snow sliding over milky meadows and forming rivulets leading to a richly flowing stream just above each slender hip. No sound intrudes other than the harsh whispers and panting of young males with a wet boy. If that's how you see me, and what you hear, then you're not a canine, you're a man who'll sooth my fears, and pretend I'm his little girl, and he's my daddy, and I want him to teach me, so I led him here." "Is it time for school, or do we have all night?" Dave asked. "It's just pretend," the boy whined, "make some of it up yourself." "You were out front changing the tire on your bicycle," the man began, finally dropping the boy in his tracks. Lessen fell on the towels covering the floor of the shower, assuming a tight fetal position, his hysteria mute. In mime, the master blew firmly across the tip of his index finger, holstering his imaginary pistol as he knelt to see if his disciple yet lived. It was easy to tell, as Lessen, for all his occasional stoicism, could not help panting, gasping and hiccupping, nor voluntarily ebb the flow of teas actually dampening the peach-colored bath towel. "I knew there was a varmint in you somewhere," the master soothed, "and I just wanted a shot at him. I didn't mean to knock you off your feet. You looked beautiful on your feet. I was standing with my penis just an inch or two from you slim, white back for a long time, so I know," the male continued, "and I liked standing close and feeling the heat of you against you, and picturing you as one beautiful young male freshened your snowfields with fresh, hot blizzards, one after another, gasping and panting over your beautiful pre-teen body and at the memories of seeing you gently and fully mounted by their own. I wanted that for us, not a basket case looking for a laundry behind iron bars. I want you mostly the same, with occasional freshness, not fresh all the time, and occasionally the same. I don't think I can make it happen, your mother having years on me, but I could be wrong. Allowing for that, I decided to swim with you. We changed in different rooms, so there was nothing to that, but in the pool you were aggressive and seemed to know what you wanted. We'd talk for an hour or two on each date, and that may have been a mistake and I should have responded to your displays more readily. But I have an out there because you were hanging with trogs and banging with trog wanna-bees, leaving me little time to work ways on you, mysterious or otherwise. Your mother, for some reason just the beast you describe, indicated that you'd been punked out, so that put carnality in play. You led, I followed, but you diverge at will, spreading bread crumbs on all the paths. This is fun after school, fun while you're working on your dives, but, alone, in a locked room, the whole night ahead of us, what's fun as we ride down Elm Street is what you were talking about in Heller's film, contrast as a gimmick, which lasts about as long as it takes to say the word. I'm not tired of it, and I hope I never am, but this isn't the time or place." "You're fighting fire with fire and you've got more experience," the boy said. "But," the adult responded, "what if I point out that you're the one with Lesser experience? You might take it as a play on words, and then I'd be stuck trying to revive my goldfish at the bottom of his aquarium." "I thought I was meant to be a little girl," the boy noted sourly. "And I thought I'd never have to resort to chains and a medieval rack to straighten your kinks out," Dave said. "I though you telling me the details of what happened would help, and I hoped openly molesting you for a couple of hours might be the answer." "They'd beat your trying to be funny all the time," the boy retorted, "the rack would be child's play, and you doing me over in the shower, well, that's close, but sophomoric tangents and bush-league asides get so tiresome you could stick me against the wall and it probably would be an improvement, you know, say there was a line of your other students at the rack and I didn't want to waste the whole day." "Humor is a terrible thing to fail at," Dave agreed, "any lack of levity can affect the self-esteem of the one who thinks he's funny, and scar his victim, senselessly." "My mother, generally speaking, the Lesser Shadows, specifically speaking, and now you, unspeakable, and I'm still young, meaning not matter how sick I get of it all, you're still going to picture me as Nicky and Pierre let me to the altar on the set and the youngest of the Anglo gods was led behind me while I lay over a sheepskin covered in read silk and watched him approach from two angles on the monitors. You just want to ask me if the twelve year olds stripped out of their primitive fashions before they massaged us with gel. You want to know how close everyone huddled, and how long it took for them to all get naked, and what it felt like when Nicky guided Johan against me and what the eighteen year old looked like as the other naked young males helped Nicky and Pierre get Johan and I comfortable. All that stuff and what it looked like at the end with two cameras less that two feet away from what was happening between his athletic teenager's body and my little-boy body." "We'll get to outlining in two months," the teachers said, "and meantime, it's better to start with a full text, and derive your summary from that." "Great!" the boy enthused, "I'll leave out the funny stuff, then the text will serve as its own sketch, and I can hang out with dubious friends." "For a full moment there I thought you were going to say you'd be hanging out with your mother," Dave said. "Nothing could make her look good," the ten year old noted, "but you seem to make her look less bad." "Funny you should put it that way," Dave responded, "because you have long moments of making the entire human race look better." "I was trying to be funny," the boy explained patiently, "so you'd stop wolfing around me and wondering how gentle Johan was and how much Nicky helped him and what his expression looked like on the monitors, and the noises two dozen handsome young males as they huddled around trying not to do anything fast because it would spoil the shot. You want to know what Pierre whispered when he knelt by my head and coaxed me. You wonder how long it was before I felt his teen loins firmly against me and Pierre figured out, out of all the males, who the most excited was, and how he guided Bergo into position squatting and blocking my view of the monitors while Johan rested against my body, and how Nicky, who'd been very successful with what he'd done now came and knelt at Bergo's left leg and put out both his palms in front of the twenty year old's penis so that when he, Bergo, did what Johan was going to do in my belly, I'd know exactly what was happening. You'd want to ask if Bergo, squatting just in front of me, shaking and trembling and sweating, filled both Nicky's palms when he spilled his hot, young-adult seed; even, you'd want to know, how much sperm splashed on Nicky's arms, and if any of his spraying seed splattered on my shoulders and neck, here and here, and stuff like that." "You've got a point," the master mused, "but I prefer thinking of you as a boy I picked up hitching, you know, running away from his mother. He's a nervous and shy little boy but we have lunch together and we begin to relax even though I'm reluctant to enter into a plot to ice his old lady. We get to the motel after a long afternoon of driving together. While driving we have left both cabbages and kings to our betters and he's told me that he wants to go camping with the handsome young bachelor living down the hall, and his mother is threatening to have his friend investigated by every cop in town. I feel sorry for the tyke and agree to call his teacher to arrange a date for them the following evening, when we'll be back in town, the boy and I. He thinks that's great, but then he gets shy and embarrassed and finally murmurs that he's inexperienced and doesn't want to disappoint his friend when they're out in the tent. I respond sympathetically, telling him he can be frank with me and ask any questions he wants, and I'll tell him as much as I know. This leads to a long dialogue, ten or fifteen pages, if it was written out, and, after awhile, he begins teasing me, and, yes, in an hour or so I'm a big bad wolf and he's hiding in the shower with towels on the floor so ye wolf might dine in comfort on his naked young body." "Is the wolf full of hot seed?" the boy responded, his voice suddenly lily soft and boar feral. "The boy is going to spend all night alone with a young adult," Dave replied, his own voice lowering to a cactus scratch, "so, yes, the wolf spends his seed as he allows the boy to practice what he's going to do in the tent." "Does the boy take the thick, white cum of his adult partner in the shower, or do they go lie on the bed so they can talk and make it last?" Lessen wanted to know. "I'll have to ask him," the teacher said, "all I know for sure is he wants me to cum off on his little-boy belly, because he wants his cute friend's seed in his mouth, but he wants to see what happens with an adult, too." "I've done it in private with just one adult," the boy whispered in his new voice, "Mex Helgendorf, the writer." "Were you alone with him for a long time?" Dave quizzed. "He was a writer," the child allowed, "they get paid for the long ball." "So lots of quizzing?" the man asked. "Yeah, but he knew how to do it," the boy said. His words might have had a cold edge, but apparently his memory was of warmer things, for the ten year old suddenly released from his curled position, and pushing his head and shoulders out the shower door, re-arranged the towels as he wriggled, ending arched over the sill, his arms stretched high above his head on the bathroom floor, his legs spread as wide as the luxury shower stall would allow, and his hips thrust high in the air. Dave moved between the boy's legs, kneeling so his penis probed the child, then rested solidly against the young boy's full, teen-size erection. His left hand fondling the silky inner thigh of his student, he used his right to jerk off, cumming heavily on the young male's tense belly and panting chest. Not wetting his hand with his own heavy cum, because we learn as we go, he stroked the now mewing and lashing child until the boy tensed like cold iron and after a long shuddering pause sprayed repeatedly high and fast, soaking his own wet, slick chest with a heavy, splattering shower of thin, watery sperm. "What happened next?" the boy asked. "He went on a `more' jag," the man said, "which was predictable enough. I guess I would have been surprised if anything else happened. He became persistent and demanding, even acting out in class by hinting at what was going on, and, when we were alone, blackmailing me into doing what he wanted. I traded in my car for an older model with driver's side, only, airbags, then began giving in and promising I'd do some of the things that had happened while he was with the camera club. Eventually along came a wet foggy night, and I gave in. I'd pushed the right buttons to get him to want to use his mouth with me while we were driving. I thought it was going to be easy, if killing a ten year old can ever be called easy, then he began a long, graphic account of hiking off into the woods with the writer, Mex." Nordstrom looked up at the man at his right shoulder and rolled his eyes. "Did you say the writer?" he asked, "as in paid for hitting the long ball?" "Crime, trauma, and disaster on a dark road on a damp, foggy night, and you're wondering about what we talked about while I got up my nerve?" "It beats sitting on a log by the bay watching the tide," the boy replied. "But what it probably doesn't beat is a young and inexperienced Nordstrom, age eleven, becoming mature in the hands of his priest," the master whispered. "You may be right," the boy allowed, "but my story doesn't beat what happened to Father Yen when he was a fourteen-year-old gymnast, so I should start with what he told me while we were getting ready to be naked with each other." "It doesn't seem to have corrupted you, so I guess I'm old enough," the artist said. "Lassitude, lack of moral fiber, degeneracy," the boy responded, "I've had to grow up with them all, as well as food, the hairball step dude subbing for Dad, while I'm hoping he, Dad, doesn't go off the deep end thinking of that smooth ball of nothing tensing up over his wife and ice the freaking moron, and my sister missed angel camp by at least a thousand summers, and food, again, and hanging out with the stoners, who aren't bad company if one lives on a stone, instead of grinding Plato with you, and now there'll be talk about you and me, and however Lessen died, he'll be reborn, so, compared with the top half of the A-list, a little corruption seemed like a day off, and, guess what, still does." "It is the Fourth," Dave said, "so you're not exactly ditching." But I'm going to ditch for awhile. We're just passing the 350,000-word mark, with two-million characters and five-hundred pages also in the offing. I've always had trouble mixing numeric and spelled-out numbers. Strunk and White say use one or the other, don't mix them, but I do it, anyway, perhaps having something of the rebel in my and wanting to act-out in novel fashion, bursting the surly bounds of humdrum fiction with a 10 here and a ten there, brassy, devil-may-care, a proper urchin through and through. Writers seldom acknowledge each other in print, just like Macy's doesn't tell Saks, but maybe if it can be part of the story it would be okay. What I wanted to do was eliminate John Hughes, original author of my previous derivative effort from an image I do want to sketch. This original story is more apt. Being off the net I'm not able to find who wrote "Man Without A Face", only that Mel Gibson directed as well as starred. Anyway, there's one so totally cliché scene, when Gibson yells at Nordstrom for looking at his scar, that the writer gets to stand by the harpsichord. The scene, from "Amadeus", is the presentation of Salieri's welcoming march. "An interesting little piece, but wouldn't it be better...?" No derisive laughter on my part, though: the script, in its original, was probably heavier than the film. You know, so many people hired on to cut and say No. In contrast, I have so few hired on if I want to pack us bag and baggage off to China, we're behind the wall faster than Mimi shipped Drew. "Yen, my son, you grow so tall." "Yes, uncle," the fourteen year old said, "I'm like the stork or the heron. It is most feeling of embarrassment that I walk with." Ni looked at the nephew half his age. There was a forming cragginess to the developing face, a trace of dark, silken hair on his upper lip, a golden softness to his liquid brown eyes. He had grown nearly a foot since the prosperous salesman's last visit, not a year earlier, his body now exaggerated in its long-limbed, big-footed, knobby-kneed coltishness. Lanky and spare, the child nonetheless moved with a solemn grace, and was capable of standing still, head bowed, anytime doing so seemed to please those around him. "The eyes of others follow your beauty," Ni said softly to the boy, "not the distance between yourself and the sky." "But they pin themselves as the iron of a compass pins itself to the iron of the north," the boy said, "they follow like prints in snow, and it is now the wish of my mother that I begin teaching younger boys that of the bars and mat and rings which has been taught to me, and by old custom that means the pool of the boys, some the age I've sought successfully, but most as yet unsuccessful in that pursuit by as much as three anums, for the duration of one hour following each class." "You feel they will tease you, my nephew," the older male said, "and I understand your fear." "None are even close," the boy continued, "they climb in sense of mocking one upon the back of the next to speak with me." "Well," the uncle mused, "they are gymnasts." "And a light heart doth conquer such?" Yen asked, "or the elder does leave free himself of the feelings held in the heart of the younger?" His English was imperfect but his message as sharp as a Sherwood arrow. "Yen," the man said gently, "as the wobbly child of the stage becomes a stag, so you will grow, so you will reach full manhood. At that time, because you are wise and gentle, all will look up to you; you will be above all. As a youth, it is perhaps good for you to learn of being tall only in stature, as your new students see you, to be treated as less than you are, to be humbled by the taunts of boys and serve as the object of their foolery. Others are beset upon with fist and blow, and that you are spared, but to be spared all is to be a flower grown under glass, When it is the glass that breaks, it is the flower that dies." "I see the poetry of your thought, dear uncle," the boy said, "but my mind is not a dwelling of comfort the logic, for should your metaphysical glass not avail itself of wholeness, in the first place, no stem or bud or leaf should endure beyond the first sprout of the seed." "The organics of a weed or flower or grain of rice, my nephew," the man said, "should not so engage your attention that you take them seriously. They are for poets and those unfit to fill any role but that of scrivener. Dwelling off their flimsy pages means the winds of the world blow on you, not by you, and that you lean in their direction. Since time immemorial, the winds have always ceased, have returned as pleasing breezes. But, my nephew, as your song of flower and sheltering glass is of a student's mind, my winds are of a teacher's, and both are equally wrong when it comes to the burdens you face. If you were normal, Yen," the man continued, "your young gymnasts would respect your knowledge and love you for your gentle ways, but you are a supreme boy, taller, kinder, and this is merely a distraction, a novelty, calling on the same instincts that made our ancestors note the markings of prey and food. Now the rice comes steaming hot in porcelain bowls, and heat from the combustion of oil, yet the instinct for the different remains, the obsession with any change in the pattern that began with the trail of the beast across a valley floor." "Hooves to grass to carve a path to stop the wandering man," the fourteen year old student said, doing his best with a language the equal in complexity of his own, "feet stopping of the man, foot changing the way they go, but uncle, is it food or the eye of the tiger's glow?" "My son," the man replied, "it is hooves you find, not the print of the paw found only in the wet of the mud; they are domestic beasts, and you have only startled them, caused them to mill nervously, and react by teasing, which is the only way known to them." "So it is the bearing of the cross with slackness not accorded the upper lip," the boy mused in his own way. "Not so fast," Ni said, adding: "I picked that one up on my last journey over that vast sea and sequential sojourn in the land of the pink walrus, `not so fast'. If they could run, it would fly from their lips as they flew on their wings of plastic no larger than the hands of a child." "The wings of magic legend seem of a fantasy, calling forth the massive bird of gobble-gobble and far aloft feather and all, suspending him for forty-seven years. Compounding interest in the legend, pages as paper washed in the finest clay, so bright are the colors and crisp is the text promising the turkey will almost never have to pay." "Let the problems of others be a solace to you, my son," the affectionate uncle said, "while regarding them not for their entertainment value, alone, but as cautionary, for there, with unlimited food backed by the unlimited magic of the plastic wing, go you and I; go we, go us all. The village of the glossy walrus does not teach us anything but the true nature of ourselves, for in it are blockages to alert movement of all colors, including our own. They warn us with frank and open display, of how we will look one day, and are masters at inspiring the search for any other way." "I am but a student of their language," Yen said, "and have yet to be guided to its faultless interior, but preparation for the journey, casts doubt upon the trip; their tongue seems most inferior, advancing like a rock of stone buried almost to its tip." "Oh, they merely wobble as befits those who are fatigued," Ni said, "for ten-thousand years they've brought us, with their code of risk and greed." "Then, uncle," the tall adolescent said, "protecting us, how is it to be done? from the rubble of their vast collapse, when their plastic's done?" "You take the view of a little fish," the man said, "because you live in a lesser pond, see with smaller eyes, because they bestow on us a wondrous gift, and a magnificent surprise." "Such as?" the boy asked, demonstrating in a respectful way that though his years be tender he, too, had delved and divined amongst the vagaries and variances of the foreign tongue, and been rewarded with a nugget or two to hold, to cherish, and to use as he might." "The planet is a tired place," the uncle said, "its oil going up in smoke. Some end is near, some end is clear, but it's our end, that's the joke. But twice it needs of thinking, and twice must it be surveyed, for what is funny the outside, may betoke fine plans well laid." "Who would know and how would you find," the boy said, "what is going on, their language offers no hint or clue, seems naught but verbal con." "If of nothing they speak," Ni responded, "then nothing there is, getting to the heart of the issue, for eternal peace is their offer to us, an end to the world via tissue." This is excessively difficult to write and could easily get tiresome to the reader, so from here on out I'll translate their hype, and know you'll still follow the leader. "There is a philosophical sub-set," Ni said to the tall boy in the passenger's seat, "who see our time on earth cut short by certain realities, concurrent with an end, though a spectacular end, to inventive genius, which, in the end, simply invented it all. This branch of doctrine, informally called Free Spirit, allows us to gratify ourselves on alternative paths; to live more of life in fewer years. Free Spirit philosophers know, in the first place, they may be wrong, so decorum rules their behavior, and they are good citizens in every outward way. However, when the doors are bolted for the night, and the shutters drawn and latched, they believe taboo should be left to sleep in the barn, that men and woman should not just yield to their desires, but become avid in their pursuit. This pursuit includes family members, principally fathers and older brothers with their daughters and younger sisters, and also includes extensive involvement with small, stable groups outside the family. "I'm bringing it up," the driver went on, "because of your situation with your gymnastic students, which constitutes a small group, and a group that is likely to endure for several years." "Assuming I don't drown the freaking lot," the boy muttered, "I suppose you're right." "What I have in mind is an experiment," Ni explained, "an exercise to determine if ways once accepted and sustained over thousands of years, by many cultures, can be re-kindled in our time, a, because that time is running short, and, b, because little new remains to engage our attention and draw us forward as we have been drawn for the two white centuries." "And `heads of knuckles' are meant to take the place of computers and cell phones?" the boy asked dubiously. "With taboo sleeping in the out buildings," the man said, "and outside any lock that is locked when someone's around, there are options in a club of maturing boys, that, while illegal, lead to the discovery of pleasures so intense and enduring they justify their forbidden status. In a building world, these sins of the flesh compound enervated and degenerate behavior, slowing the building, but in a static world, it is the filling of time that becomes paramount, not the use of it, and what was once deemed cretinous lust, becomes, instead, the hub of small groups who make up internally for that which is not available, or not worth the effort, externally." They tried it in Chinese but Yen still didn't follow, so they relaxed as a few miles passed, then turned in and parked in front of the athletic center, checking their watches and agreeing they were early. "Is there any boy among your students whom you personally dislike?" Ni asked, "never mind the pranks and silliness. Any individual to whom you have a real aversion?" "I'm half-kidding when I complain," Yen said shyly, "they're all okay, and I must look kind of freaky to them." "Is there anyone of them you especially like?" Ni asked. "Husu So," the boy murmured, "he's never played tricks, and he's suddenly getting tall like me, so his eyes `meekly look', and are warm with understanding." "Do the other boys like him?" the uncle asked. "Yes," Yen said. "Have you and he spent time alone together?" Ni asked. "I think he'd be embarrassed if I asked," the boy murmured. "At your ages," the man responded, "excitement can be mistaken for discomfort, very easily, as to a maturing boy both go hand in hand. Does he stand close to you, when he could stand or sit further away?" "Yes," the boy nodded. "And if you are the new arrival, is it the same, do you seek his company?" "Yes," the boy murmured softly. "If you were alone with him and he told you, in secret, he was deeply involved in taboo behavior and repeatedly sinned with an adult male, how would you feel?" Ni asked. "I don't know," the boy replied. "Give it more thought," his uncle suggested, "would you think less of him, maybe to the point of annulling your friendship and even telling other boys, or would you want to know the details of who his partner was and what kind of acts they performed when they were alone with each other?" "I wouldn't `feel for the sword', but I might be very confused," the boy said. "Assume," Ni continued, "you had many hours together, perhaps an entire night, in a private place, and assume what he told you was very positive, that he liked being handled by a handsome young adult, that he learned to trust the man, and be free when he was in the man's hands, and, further, that he wanted to tell you all the details of what happened his first time with the adult, and, further yet, that he wanted to teach you some of the things that had happened during their private times together. Would you want to remain alone with Husu, or would you make excuses and return to your home?" "I would want to hear his story and stay with him," the tall child whispered. "How do you feel speaking of these things with me?" the twenty eight year old asked, secretly thrilled at the creation of a zygote. "In view of the underlying philosophy, and in view of their wide-ranging historical precedent," the boy answered, "I feel less nervous and self-conscious. I like the way your voice sounds when you ask me personal questions, and I think you are what the lesser walruses call `way cute'. Talk of similar things fills the air, but of young girls most is spoken, yet what better for a boy than to leave his first mastery to an older male?" "How old are your gym students?" the uncle asked in return, embryonic in his thinking and hoping he wasn't proceeding too rapidly. "Husu and four others are thirteen," the boy said, "and Yo, Fan, and Muy are twelve." "I didn't mean to be suggestive," the man said, "but rather to lead you to the way of many thoughts, not so that you might lose yourself amongst them, but so you might find a discreet and shady way of private passion and pleasure, not only for your fresh loins, but to share with the young bodies of others, Husu at your side." "This is an ancient way?" the boy asked. "It comes and goes," the uncle said, "at times men dominate with young boys, at other times, more restraint is called for by the social order -- confused boys make poor warriors -- and dread torments are reserved for those who'd tamper with the fighting stock." "But I've heard it told the other way," Yen said, "that the most dangerous fighters `gird for the boy in their shadow'." "They were not confused as boys," the older male said, "they grew to as great a code as any, proved it better than most, and passed it on, here for five-hundred years, there for a thousand, and, before that, no one knows." "If it happened very early," Yen said, "as man first left the cave, how would a boy, with a handsome young hunter, seek that which his young heart craved?" "You mean the man's hands gently on his body," the adult said, "possibly as they lay in wait for game?" "Yes," the tall, lanky youth said. "He'd show his belly," Ni said, "as a female would her breasts. He would lie against his chosen male, arranging his dress so his nakedness would press against the hunter, perhaps wriggling and thrusting his hips to his partner." "What would the hunter do?" the boy asked. "If the sun was warm, and no game in sight, he'd roll the child on his back; strip from the youth, all his clothes, and play gently at pillage and sack. His mouth he'd use, on the bare young chest, finding each nipple in turn, then naked he'd be, against the youth, slowly kindling the body of the panting child, and finally letting him burn." "We still have ten minutes before the other begin arriving," Yen whispered softly, removing his big, coltish hands from his lap, leaning back, and for the first time in his life let the solid mass, long and heavy, bulging his gym short hugely be seen by the eyes of another. His uncle's eyes slowly left him and looked into his eyes. "The boys were not teasing you," the man whispered, utterly sure of his ground, "they were displaying for you. If you think back you'll probably recall they seldom if ever wore any kind of shirt when they were stunting and cavorting." "That's why I like Husu," the boy responded, "he kept his shirt on. Very modest." "Did you let the boys see you bare chested?" the man asked. "No," the teen said, "I think that's why they fooled around, to try to get me to take my shirt off with them, but I was meant to be their teacher, and it didn't seem proper." "It wouldn't have been," his uncle agreed, "as Free Spirit behavior intrudes, so it damages, leading to draconian reprisals. The sure way to prevent this is to limit the intrusion, and a teacher or coach, on duty, should maintain the decorum that comes naturally to you. On the other hand, it is teaching that is going to happen, and a lot of fast learning, so there is flexibility, especial