One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPT. FOURTEEN -- TEMP. FILE END 12/30/02

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

But this game is never a walk in the park and they say if you have it, lay it on with a trowel. I guess twenty-eight thousand words in Chapter Thirteen would pass as generous, in an era of big type and big margins, and the number's disturbing because I think Twelve is only fourteen, then, I believe, Eleven is seven thousand, meaning we're headed for the infinite chapter faster than my talent will allow for. Can't be good news. Of course, a simple answer would be to use less; emulate my commercial colleagues, but noting something like that makes me sound like Thurber, and he wasn't very popular. My enigma is that if I use more, I kill the very mice I play with, you know, like a cat shaking a little too hard. I've been studying, watching how one of my two year olds plays with the kittens, now six weeks old, but it seems a tricky business, tossing them in the air off her back feet, and tackling them from a dead run, rolling them under her like a round log under a surf rescue boat. Sometimes I wonder if the kittens like it all that much, so that makes me, correspondingly, worry about how you feel about being batted and pawed around your reading room. Well, I don't bite, and you have thousands of other stories to choose from, so I'll run my game, welcoming those who want to play along, while happy as any histrionic, Hoffman-like Jew at pissing off those who find it is a little thick. That's you being dumb, not me being smart.

National Effigy Day. March first. My birthday. March is a great month for bonfires, and you wouldn't want to be outside for long without one. To assure an equal distribution of angst, I suggest you roast yourselves, leaving me to the joys of natural events, which are illness and doctors for most of us. It's just an idea that came to me as I fight and claw my way back to sanity after years of struggle with the devil's weed. . Hello, my name is Tom, I'm a recovering pothead. I'm an unrepentant pedophile, who will molest the rare willing and attractive child given an opportunity and invitation to do so. (Willing and attractive children aren't rare, my inclination is.) So, burn and dance, comb the embers and roast a pig, let the fat times roll. March First. You heard it here, first.

"Forest?" Mr. Kohler called from the chem lab.

"Yes, sir?" the eleven-year-old boy called from the classroom.

"Is everyone gone?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to stay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good," the twenty-eight-year-old teacher said, "I got your letter, and I was way flattered."

The boy finished filing a sheaf of papers and looked at the door as the teacher entered from the lab. Jeb Kohler stood an easy six-two, and, in jacket and tie would have been hard to differentiate from a busload of champion swimmers. He looked as his little chem whiz, definite and respected teacher's pet, and smiled. "Very flattered," he repeated.

"It's more than physical," Forest said, "we might be able to get a couple of boys from the next street to help, but Harry is kinda jealous I got you as a teacher, and he had Mr. Kevin, so I thought if he could get to know you socially a little, like I get to do when I help after class, it might be cool."

"Tell him," Jeb said, "he was the favorite student I never had; I've always kept an eye on his progress, and I'd be happy to hang out with him and the two of you once in awhile, especially if we can accomplish something."

"With you, we could get the pool deep enough for shallow dives," the boy said, "so that would be accomplishing something."

"If you'd taken physics, you could use levers and pulleys," the teacher noted with a smile.

"I was sailing when I was three," the boy laughed, "I know that stuff, but that's just for moving rocks and boulders. We need to know how to stack them, like molecules in organic formulas, physics doesn't help there."

"I think that's primal and instinctive," Jeb said, "cavemen could do it."

"Well," the boy smiled shyly, setting off the odd ton of dynamite in the process, "we are building it a long way from anywhere, out in the wild."

"So you're looking for a bigger caveman," the instructor said, holding his breath. He hadn't had a young friend for several years, having missed the pretty obvious Harry two years earlier.

"One that's a little bit wilder than bigger," the boy replied, "because, as you mentioned, we could always use ropes and pulley's instead of biceps, pecs, and abs."

"Well," the man said, "I already told you I'm flattered, but it bears repeating."

They set a date for the coming Saturday morning, and by eight had walked in with their tools. They worked until noon, getting the water level to over three feet.

"Pushing these last big ones up so high will get our clothes really messed up," thirteen-year-old Harry observed as they ate their sandwiches on the mossy bank overlooking the gentle brook.

"Besides," Forest added, "we want to skinny dip when it's finished, anyway."

"I don't think the school board would like it if I took my shirt off with young students," Jeb said.

"Are they that uptight these days?" Harry asked.

"E-mails compound," the teacher explained, "by some digital law of gravity, you must drop a bigger stone, or more stones than was or were dropped on you, so, by the time it comes down through channels, to the classroom teacher, they'd prefer it if we walked around in refrigerator boxes with holes cut for the arms, and never see any kid socially."

"Same with weapons and drugs," Jeb added, "Pen knives and aspirin are included because no one is ever going to say This is nuts to anyone over them."

"Very fretful people watch over us," Harry agreed, "hand-wringers, pulers, moaners, scuttling little caricatures of humans, intellectual vermin, closing this and canceling that so we can all grow up healthy and identical. Some say they want to control us from one little box, so the can get the money and remain seated, others point out that they are vastly too stupid to organize anything beyond a hot dog company."

Jeb grinned and noticeably relaxed, passing from teacher to friend. "They came into history as well poisoners," he said, "and a stream is like a well, so we'll have to scout frequently and recon extensively to be sure none are upstream of us."

The boys looked at each other, first, eyes glowing, then up at Jeb, who was perched against the stonework of the almost finished dam.

"Does that mean you'll stay up here with us, and help us with the last stones," Harry asked in a whisper.

"Yes," Jeb said.

"And swim with us when it's done?" the younger boy wanted to know.

"I didn't bring a suit, but, if you still want me to, when we're finished, I'd like to."

"We do," the older Harry said, and the younger Forest nodded.

"Do you want to talk a little before we strip to the waist in front of each other?" the chemistry teacher asked.

"Yes," both boys said. The three adjourned to the bank, the twenty eight year old lying back on the moss, a child on either side of him. The young boys found his hands as he quizzed them.

"Have you ever been bare-chested together?" he asked.

"I guess we're really modest," Harry said, "because I've never seen him."

"I've never seen Harry, either," Forest said.

"That's significant," Jeb said, trying to keep too much teacherese out of his voice, "because most boys wouldn't think a thing about it, especially working together."

"What does it mean?" Forest asked.

"Probably that you're very strongly attracted to each other," the young man said, "maybe so much so, that if you saw each other you'd get really hard boners, and that might be embarrassing, all by itself, never mind a person you like's eyes staring at your bare belly and nipples."

"I knew there'd be chemistry in it, somewhere," Forest quipped, being the one who felt more comfortable in the familiar presence of his teacher.

"As long as there's no psychology," the older male said, "no punking, warping, twisting, or unleashing of issues including, but not limited to, drug abuse, not use, alcohol use or abuse, running away, attempts at suicide, or joining the corps."

"I think we'd rather hang out and swim with you," Harry said, again to his younger friend's alert nod.

"It will be gentle and friendly," Jeb whispered to both boys, "and, if you don't like it, it, a, won't make you anything to do with gay, and, b, won't cause pimples or make you grow hooves, horns or even a millionth of an inch of a tail. If you do like it, it's something new to like, and that's pretty much it unless you give each other diseases or start obsessing so it interferes with other important activities, and I say `important' because being together, is, itself important, and far moreso than most television, and virtually all computer games."

"If we could be with you, I think they could be wiped out, too," Harry observed.

"It might be interesting, at that," the teacher said, thoughtfully, "what if we were discreetly open about it?" he mused aloud. "There are two of you, if anyone asked you could back up each other's denial."

"And if we brought Allen Witherspoon over," Forest said, "it would be his word against three, so he'd have to go along."

Jose and I looked at Tina, eyes to eyes. Fortunately no is the same in Spanish as it is in English, so when she started on an apparent new tangent to her story, we were both able to stop her pretty little mouth in it tracks. She did pout for just a moment, saying, "but I like you, I want to tell you everything." Since everything a major portion of the word's people, few readers are going to stick a supposed big-gun novel that just peels down layer after layer, each introducing the next, through the middle and out the other side, and that's the book. There has to be more, not just one gratuitous carnal binge after another. Over a fifth of the book is in the can after just a few weeks, and, with now less than eight hundred thousand words to type, there is no need to find out why twelve year old Allen, who has been able to whisper over the back of Harry and Forest's seat on the bus a few times, but gets off at a way different stop, so they don't know him, but do know they like him, has admitted so much interest in Mr. Kohler.

There are numerous things there won't be room for. Who, for example, cares that here in Belize, they build houses with rafters on forty-eight-inch centers.? Since the pine here is often, but not always, about like American oak, this isn't quite as insane as it might at first seem, but is the next step sixty inches? It's like the hint about the ice bottles, most will scratch their heads and say what the fuck is that doing her, while other save hours a month and think that one illustration makes this the best book they ever read. So, sure, we've got little Allen leaning over the seat in front of him, and, boys being boys, probably saying things most readers would not be interested in, but what of the one who is? Who wouldn't mind leaving our rainy golf course, my apartment in Torreon, a resort hotel in Canada, and a forest stream in the same country, not to mention a Caribbean island, and the middle of a mini-series script, for a yellow bus? Many, may hands. Are these readers chopped liver? Don't they yearn, don't they strive, don't they want, and need, and ache, and bleed like the rest of us? Who would be the first to turn them away? >From time to time I've sketched examples of why you need a king, and here's one of why I need a little royal thumb, too. Allen, take a bow and split, now there's a good little subject.

"You can bring a few boys over, once in awhile," Jeb said, "and you never have to worry about me hitting on them unless you give an explicit, verbal invitation, okay?"

"Just him," both boys said, nodding.

"Good," the older male agreed, adding: "sex clubs are pretty common in the suburbs, but they tend to attract seedy layabouts, the trench-coat and little hat types, or the big hat types, which are even worse, so," he went on, "maybe we can do a little better."

"If nobody smokes or drinks, that would keep a lot of kids out," Harry said.

"BYOB," Forest added: "Bring your own book."

"Looks like you just passed chem for the year," Jeb laughed, tussling the boy's hair.

"I would think, for chemistry, bring your own bomb would be more appropriate," Harry said.

"You know?" the teacher mused, looking at the older boy, "these woods are out of the way enough, we might just pull that off. Have a bomb club. More fun than rockets, but these days, sly has to be the word.

"And what the heck," he went on, "if I'm going to risk a sheaf of consecutive sentences by taking my shirt off with you guys, and maybe for starting some kind of club, what can blowing a stump with a little five pounder amount to?" Everyone smiled up at the sky and the passing clouds, seemingly very pleased with himself because how many among us exceed rocket science?

"Did a man ever touch you when you were a kid?" Forest asked.

"Why don't we save that, and your friend on the bus, for another time," Jeb suggested.

"If there is a next time," Harry said, intoning the tag line of a New York sports show.

"That's part of our act," Jeb said, "we hang out together, all the time, not just furtively, once in awhile. `The Purloined Letter.'"

"But that's a way stupid story," the younger child said, "the first place anyone would look would be through letters on a mantel."

"I know," the teacher said, "but still the principle is good, not, by any means, rub peoples' noses in it, I'd report something like that just out of being pissed off, myself, but not hiding, either, perhaps standing a little catcalling when we walk into a restaurant or theater."

"Probably more whispering to ask if they can come over," Forest remarked.

"As time goes on, maybe some can," the man said, "there are so many fat kids in school, a club of the attractive ones could probably fit in a Subaru."

"It will be cool when we get to be your age," Forest observed, "because, if fifteen years there will be so few good looking kids left, I'll be able to find a boy to teach, because I look better than his classmates, you know, assuming there are a few cute one's left."

"There are as many slim, proper boys in school today," the teacher said, "as there were, proportionally, obese and oversize boys just thirty years ago. It's the most astounding change in human history, and, certainly from the viewpoint of a chemist, highly unsurvivable, if that's no an oxymoron."

"More like piggymoron," Forest giggled, giving us another hint at why Jeb was so happy to find the eleven year old's letter in his mailbox.

"Yes," the teacher observed, rising on an elbow and looking down into the boy's twinkling brown eyes, "and never forget that in the land of the moron, the single-cell brain is king."

"I hope you teach us more about biology than that," the razor-minded child said, looking back up at his teacher, smiling softly and shyly. With a brief look at Harry for concurrence, the man lowered his lips to the boy. Forest found his face with his hands and they paused a long moment before the child brought the young man to him. Harry rolled on his side to gaze and see more biology than he'd witnessed, at least live, in his life, and after he'd seen enough to remember, he unbuttoned both males to their waists, pulling their shirt tales free of their shorts, then stripping himself to the waist.

Jeb rolled on his back, bringing his eleven year old student on top of him, the boy's back to his athletic chest, his hands seeking Harry's as he began to sexually mostest the child, often letting the fingers of his right hand stray wantonly into the school-delineated No-touching zone. Harry knelt at the tall adult's right shoulder, also touching his older friend low on his waist, sometimes with Jeb, sometimes on his own.

Gently, Jeb detached the beautiful young body from his arms, and, wordlessly, but with several affectionate nudges, they returned, shirtless now, to work on the stone wall of the dam.

I looked into Jose's eyes. "How was he holding up?" I wondered. Tina looked sleek and beautiful in his arms, her swollen nipples still jutting proudly as the teen molested her on her belly and chest and I gently masturbated his still-huge erection up between her creamy white thighs. If she'd been an inexperienced virgin, I would have taken Jose all the way with my hand, assuming, since I loved watching the heavy, white, gouting sport of his ejaculation, she would, also. But it was getting pretty obvious she'd let mature males spend on her body, before, so I refrained, instead, gently removing the girl from the heaving chest of the beautiful sixteen year old and spreading her young legs wide, knees raised, on the bed. She grabbed herself behind the knees, pulling her legs down against her body. Jose, seeming half-drugged, found his hands and knees, and I helped him a little by leading him by his jutting penis, to a position kneeling between her long pretty legs. He lowered over, looking hotly down into her mother's brown eyes, pretty much the only thing left of the fat woman, and I coaxed him against her and her eyes softened and she whispered Yes almost silently.

Jose's powerful trunk moved forward and I felt his big penis swell dramatically in my right hand as I reached between their now sweating young bodies and guided him fully to her. His breath became hard and ragged. Her hips pumped up to him. He grunted, and she mewed and cooed softly, her hands now at his face, fingering his cheeks as she gazed up into his hot brown eyes, no on his broad shoulders urging him as her legs wrapped tightly around his boyish waist, her heels shamelessly urging him forward as I watched.

Some writers allow as how boys who are brought into sexual adulthood by homosexual partners become far better lovers than those indoctrinated by cheerleaders. I could feel with my right hand that Jose had fully taken the ten year old, and was both proud and impressed when his flat belly, with just a trace of black hair running down from his navel, lay hard and flat against her infinitely soft and smooth little-girl tummy. She seemed impressed with his remaining very deep between her wide-spread legs, and still except for his fast, light panting which nearly matched her own. So masculine was he, so dominant of her childish body, Tina was able to yield fully while in his arms, confident of their ending together, and continue her story. I knelt by the couple, bending over them at the waist, and gently eased the tip of my penis against the base of Jose's thick, hard shaft, managing to find him in precisely the spot on his penis I used to gently squeeze while waiting for the hard throbs that meant my tongue or chest would soon be covered with his thick, salty sperm.

"Is she beautiful?" I asked, and he managed to whisper Yes, then the girl took us back to where her first lovers had had, in their turn, their first experience with an adult male.

"We could almost drop in from one of the limbs," Harry said.

"It's a long way out to the road with a broken leg, longer with crushed vertebrae," the teacher noted as they horsed a two hundred bound stone onto the top tier of their structure, but he was right, six feet of water would be safe enough from six feet in the air, and, if they wanted to try a higher limb, a well landed belly-flop could take less than two feet, even from a thousand feet.

The last monster stone was in place, and the males looked at each other tensely. "We should scout around, especially after all the splashing and noise, just to be extra safe," Harry said, to Jeb's grateful look. The two boys took off like colts, heading for a nearby ridge, while Jeb decided the best place to watch the water slowly clear, would be from the middle of the basketball-court size pond. He stripped, looking for a moment down at a hugeness he hadn't noted in himself for years, and dived flat and shallow from the big boulder at the center of the stone wall.

Harry and Forest returned with the expected all-clear in a few minutes. Jeb had deliberately left his briefs on top of his shorts and the two boys stared down at them for a moment, then at each other. "Does it feel good?" Harry asked, needing something to say.

"Like a custom made ocean," the teacher laughed, "perfect, and cool enough so I can sexually molest both of you for quite a while without having to worry about an accident, if you want me to."

"We do," the children said.

"What you can try, if you want," the man said, "is stripping, one at a time, then backing into the water and into my arms. If you do that, then we can come out, together, when you're ready, and stand in a circle and watch each other get boners."

"Can we stand on a rock so we can touch together while it's happening?" Forest asked.

"If I ever teach your son or daughter," the chemist said, "they get an A, too."

"I just hope they don't have to wait `till they're eleven," the boy said, "I would have liked to do this with you and Harry when I was seven, maybe even six."

"I meant in school," the teacher said.

"I don't," the boy said with a smile as he and his friend turned their backs on each other and went into the bushes flanking the south side of the world's newest pond.

"Should I come first?" Harry asked from the bushes.

"Yes," Jeb said, "usually the taller male takes the shorter from behind, so that would be good."

"Okay," the boy replied. "Have you got your eyes closed Har?' he asked, backing cautiously from cover, and displaying himself against the foliage background as the most beautiful thing of his size for thousands of miles in every direction, especially south. His little friend, about one inch less willowy and beautiful, turned his back to the pond and said Yes.

"I don't hear your teeth chattering," the thirteen year old said as he reached the water's edge."

"That doesn't mean I've gone anywhere," Jeb replied, "just that it's been years since a fondled a young teen between his long, coltish legs, so I'm not suffering from the cold, at least for the moment."

"I've never let a handsome, athletic young, man touch me between the legs," Harry said, "so my teeth aren't chattering, either."

Slowly they inched the last couple of feet, the boy finally coming to a standstill, water just over his belly, as the mas touched his shoulders, then brought their bodies together.

"Did you have a boner while you were out of the water?" Jeb asked, hunched over the child's right shoulder.

"Yes," the boy replied.

"That means you really do want to be here," the teacher advised the student.

"All afternoon. I'm glad I wore cargoes," the thirteen year old said.

"Did you masturbate last night?" the young man asked.

"No," the boy replied, "I did on Tuesday."

"I haven't ejaculated for two days, either," the man whispered huskily in the boy's ear, then coaxed Forest from the bushes. The eleven year old looked carefully over his shoulder. "You look really good together," he commented, then began his own role in the little game by backing into the water.

"Has he molested you yet?" the younger boy asked as he backed into the gentle embrace of the adult and older child.

"No," Harry said, "I still had a boner when I got here, but it's gone now, how about you?"

"Just wait a minute, then you can do it on my tummy and legs," Forest whispered.

"Mr. Kohler, you can do it in front of me, too," Harry said.

Gently and slowly, whispering softly, it happened between them. "Try it just a little first with Forest," Jeb suggested, holding Harry lightly just above his boyish hips. "Start where I am with you, then go slowly to the frond and down while you pull him against your bare chest."

"Okay," the boy whispered back, and the man felt the subtle movement of the young muscles as the thirteen year old became a felon. "He's really beautiful," the criminal rapist whispered over his right shoulder, "a whole lot bigger than my thumb."

"Is he hard, at all?" Jeb asked.

"No," the older boy said.

"Fondle him just a little, gently," the man suggested.

"Okay," Harry whispered. Jeb did to the young teen what he was doing to the eleven year old, found him, and ran his fingers over the cold, rubbery shape of his young man's penis. "I didn't think you'd have so much hair," he whispered into Harry's ear, his strong arms now circling the boy's chest between his nakedness and Forest's

"Just for a few weeks," the boy whispered back.

"Can I feel it?" Forest asked, turning in Harry's arms. They looked, for the first time as lovers, into each other's eyes, both saying Hi. The eleven year old stepped close enough for his belly to touch his older friend's, and the bigger boy held his shoulders as he looked into his eyes and let his hands slip under the cool water. He found Jeb's hands, and they joined in gently stroking the lowest extremities of the now panting thirteen year old's silky smooth and slightly soft white belly. "Definitely," Forest whispered, adding: "Way cool, because that means you have sperm, too."

"You're eleven, you might have it too," Harry said, "just because you don't have any hair. They don't always go together, do they?"

Jeb changed Harry for his curious student, gasping audibly at the tension he felt even in the boy's flaccid state. His shaft was mounted high, and just moments of fondling, leaning over the boy, and taking him with both hands, let him know this was going to be, from an aesthetic viewpoint, the most beautiful of the dozen young boys he'd been naked with in his twenty-eight years. Nor was the physical beauty to remain un-eclipsed, because the willowy boy spread his long, knobby-kneed legs in response to being openly fondled in front of his best friend, and gently thrust his hips experimentally against Jeb's right palm, showing a perfect psychological profile to match his coltish, juvenile physique

The water was far from frigid, so they remained some minutes, the boys using most of the time to share in experimenting with Jeb's thick, heavy penis. They were delighted to find he was uncircumcised, as their young bodies were, and, whispered intently as they manipulated his big, thick foreskin and bared his glans. "He gets a little excited if we're really slow and gentle," the older boy coached his you friend, and, so affectionate was his tone, and so friendly the smiling response, it was no stretch to hope these males would one day share the same girlfriend, wife, and daughters.

"You might want to get kissing out of the way, too," Jeb suggested, "because it can be distracting later." The boys looked happily up at him, then at each other, finding each other gracefully and quickly. Jeb stood behind his student, letting his hands slide between the twining, childish bodies, and the thrusting boyish hips as they moaned gently, their tongues and lips doing a good job of making up for the slackness of their waists.

Enough was enough, it was Canada, the water was cool, and the sun in the nearby birches beckoned.

"We'll have to find a rock to stand on pretty fast, won't we?" Forest asked, as the two grabbed Jeb's hands and began tugging him gently to the verge of their pond.

"Yes," Harry grunted in agreement. With the boys in water just inches below their belly buttons, and the adult on his knees behind them, the three looked for, a, a suitable spot, and, b, the shortest route to it. After a minute's discussion, which all found erotic because it was understood, even by the youngest child, that they were going to masturbate openly together, they settled on a length of fallen timber, rather than a rock. The children would have to brace themselves against the adult, while they watched each other, but Jeb didn't mind. They looked at each other hotly. "It's going to be very messy," Jeb advised them, "so don't be shocked or freaked out when it starts. That happens sometimes."

The boys nodded. Were adults cool, or what? They'd gone so far beyond rocket science, they didn't even bother with a countdown, just nodded affectionately at each other, ran their fingers gently over each other for a last time, and, naked, left the water, a child on each of the man's strong arms. Quickly they positioned themselves on the fallen wood, fifty feet from the pond, and, foreheads together, and arms around each other's shoulders, they looked down at their lean, white bodies, saying nothing beyond whispered mews as they rose fast and hugely, the boys subconsciously spreading their young legs and trusting to the hugeness of the adult stag. The colts rubbed unashamedly against his six and a half inch shaft, freeing themselves from their pubescent foreskins by thrusting very slowly gently at just the proper angle. Their glans were almost identical, perhaps the thirteen year old shading a tone more toward purple than the little eleven year old, and both were mesmerized by the contrast of their slim, pink, five inch erections contrasted with the heavy, thick mass of the adult, with its shiny dark glans, and heavy drops of seminal fluid showing slick in its uncovered state.

For five minutes they stared down at each other, experimenting with thrusting so their foreskins peeled back, revealing fevered, wet glans, then touching each other with lingering, fondling, brushing fingers as they occasionally raised their hands to each other's chests to squeeze a nipple or just stroke and pet the smooth, now dry, white skin.

Slowly, Jeb reached for Harry. The boy hissed and rose on his toes, thrusting forward to be touched. "I want to jerk you off, just a little, while Forest watches me, okay?" he whispered.

"Yes," the thirteen year old said, staring at his young friend as he was touched for the first time. Forest reached for his schoolmate, and Jeb guided the boy's hand, teaching him to wet his fingers in the young teen's flowing seminal fluid, to spread it back along the shiny, swollen glans, then to stroke the boy. "Oh, oh, oh," Harry chanted from the bottom of his lungs as the tiny hand held in the big one began to fully masturbate him between his long, widely spread, coltish legs.

"He would probably spray in just a few minutes if you kept doing that with him," the man explained to the younger boy, with Harry nodding agreement, "but the custom is that when and adult is with a boy, the adult usually cums off, first, so the boy can share while he's still fully excited."

"Can it happen together?" Harry asked.

"Easily," the young man said, "but it's hard to be excited by what's happening with your partner while you're having your own climax, so most experienced males try to overlap their orgasms a little, but not cum together."

"Will we able to do that?" the younger boy wanted to know.

"Everything else today has been perfect," Jeb said, "so it may be right for you the first time. And remember what they say, even when it's bad, it's still pretty good."

Jeb now spread his legs further, and bracing himself on the shoulders of the naked boys standing on the log, spread his legs moe widely, his hugely straining penis jutting high in front of his belly. Instinctively, Harry dismounted from the log, standing at the young teacher's right hip. Without guidance or coaxing, he looped his boyish left arm around the tall athlete's waist, and found his hard shaft with his right hand, clamping until his knuckles whitened, slightly, then drawing the foreskin fully back. Jeb and Forest moved so close together, the adult pressed firmly against the boy's childishly soft belly. "If you don't stop, it will happen in a couple of minutes," he whispered to both the children. They were obviously not going anywhere, and Harry seemed to deepen his strokes, perhaps masturbating the adult a little faster.

"Remember, there's going to be a lot," Jeb managed to whisper. Neither boy moved away. "I'm cumming," he whispered a minute later. "On me," Forest whispered, and, in less than half a minute, hissed as his desire came true, and thick rope after rope of heavy, think, white sperm gushed across his white little-boy tummy.

While his seed was still flowing freely, Jeb gently manhandled Harry so the you teen's legs were on the log, his bare feet spread widely, with his little friend standing between his legs, bracing himself on Jeb. The man's thick left arm encircled the young teen's birdlike chest, and his right hand, slick with sperm, found the boy's almost man size boner, stroking him against the sheets of fresh semen on Forest's belly and thighs. The boy hissed and bucked hard and fast at being masturbated for the first time, quickly rising hard up on his toes, and giving his croaking verbal warning. He sprayed so hard from just inches away that the shock of the experience knocked Forest off the log. By the time he again braced himself, Harry was cumming hot and fast, spraying wantonly onto his friend's face, shoulders, and body.

Sighing, the threesome settled slowly to the grass of the meadow verging the stream. The older males lay on either side of Forest, and spent half an hour kissing and caressing the eleven year old as the tyke slowly licked their torsos clean. With much cuddling, kissing, and whispering, they molested the younger continuously, Harry finally coaxing him to he first gentle orgasm. The boy arched hard, his legs spread widely as his friend knelt between his legs and both males watched in silence as te boy's hot first semen splashed on his chest and shoulders, with a heavy flow gushing onto his belly before he collapsed, almost breathless, in the gentle arms of his young companions.

By this time, the water level in the new pond had risen sufficiently for some serious skinny dipping, so the naked males had an impromptu belly flop contest, returning to the fallen log after an hour to masturbate again and talk about experimenting with oral activities. As for you, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find out where my oral activities vis a vee cigarettes and ganja ceased, precisely where I folded my crazed-zombie wings and joined fair-cheeked humanity.

I'll bet Queenie knows, raising an interesting question. If one gets cranky and irascible from stopping smoking, is one really cranky and irascible? Or, back to normal? In other words, are cigarettes, and, for sake of argument I'll include marijuana, although I shouldn't, palliatives that make you more wonderful, tolerant, and mild-mannered than you should be? Wouldn't your life, and the world, be better if you blew your stack at people who deserved it, rather than puffing away on another Winston? Of course, if you start getting in people's faces who don't deserve it, that's another story, but our fair lady of long legs, long neck, and high breasts seems to have been asking for it for quite awhile, continually leaving ever greater messes and doing an ever sloppier job of everything she attempts. I've spent over a month giving her patient and clear examples of how to cook, how to clean, and how to conserve supplies, with no results, so, cigarettes or no cigarettes, I blistered her for ten straight minutes absolutely promising her that she is totally out of her if she doesn't do it my way, all the time, every time. I am stealing from Samantha and any family we might one day have by supporting her, and if I'm going to make the sacrifice, I want results. So, she's on thin ice. My way or the highway. Artist and drill sergeant. Weird how life gets, because the last thing I wanted was to be any kind of sergeant, ever. I don't even like telling myself what to do. For example, Self, write a million-word novel. Who needs that kind of aggravation?

The Honorable Said Mussa visited Dr. Fidel Castro in Havana last weekend. Democratic politics, Belezian style, and you know who's running things when the media stooges call Weirdy Beardy `doctor'. Liberals are very much like animals, uncomprehending. I'm sure my brother, Ted, thinks he's the end-all, be-all father, and the fact that it took thousands of Ritalin tablets to get his three kids through high school wouldn't influence his opinion of his wonderfulness, nor would he have subtracted a jot from his stature had they all committed suicide. Of course, I love them liberals, because if being a novelist is not a walk in the park, they make a cake walk of being a humorist. I mean, is there anything NOT funny about nutritional guidelines on a squeeze bottle of mustard? It has to be something, doesn't it? Didn't some high official, somewhere, have to get up one morning burning to empower his constituency, then organize, cajole, tempt and threaten; heard cats, and never, never give up? I'm forever going on about my wonderfulness at having published a million words on a major Net site, but think how our dietary official must feel. Hundreds of millions and billions of cans and bottles bear the fruit of his intellect, the stamp of his authority, and emblemize his concern. It's all so soft and warm and fuzzy as to make some amongst us want to hurl, but at least they'll know what's flying, where no conservative would give a rat's ass.

Ended up having a nice talk with Louise. The options facing her probably run as close to the civil gamut as my own life, from a beautiful Indiana farm, under the sponsorship of a church that's helped her family in the past, to shack after shack after shack, baby after baby after baby, beating after cheating after defeating, with the only absolute, absolute poverty. She needs to focus for an hour a day to have it all, that's all it takes me to run the whole shebang, until she has children, at which time she might have to devote as much as one hour in ten to motherhood, housekeeping, and related tasks. She's far more like an English country girl than an American black girl; soft, warm, gracious and beautiful, also, so lazy it's a wonder her heart beats. Teens are inherently lazy, but if she goes overboard, she'll end up, in her twenties, fishing for rati twelve hours a day, her face as leathery and beaten as Daisy's. Nagging her out of this, without driving her and the boys off, is juggling wildcats by their tales, and probably actually more challenging than my day job. It amounts to harnessing three or four perecent of my mother's pointless, mindless savagery, and, while the alert reader might note that a hundred percent of this witch's brew made me out of me, not all of us walk around with an IQ of four hundred and an entire galaxy for an ego. She's a simple, lovely girl, and if she can find that hour or two a day for others, her husband's knees will start shaking when he turns in the drive when she's in her sixties. If she doesn't she'll end up used, abused, and discarded, watching her kids go to other homes or prison, if they're lucky, as she's watched this happen with four of her brothers.

I try to feel something about all this, but it does little good. I had a ha'buddy once who thought he'd had a nervous breakdown because he felt nothing about anything. If I'd felt anything about anything, I'd have killed my mother when I was ten instead of waiting for my brothers help when I was four times that age. I don't feel happy about being a great writer, and I wouldn't feel unhappy if I saw Samantha, rumpled and slack-faced, getting out of the red pickup. In my mid-fifties I feel only a mild contentment, bordering on smugness, I suppose, knowing I've done my best, and, if it's better than anyone else's best, why shouldn't be? If Anne was flooded by the pulsing, hot ejaculate a tall, dark, half-wild athlete as I was passing through Las Vegas, New Mexico, on my way to Denver, and she went on to have six delightful kids as he made her millions of dollars, that would be one set of facts, if he turned out to be a nervous, neurotic, misery, as interested in her nursing credentials as she was in his law degree, that would be another set of facts. Mother of the year of a major metropolitan area, or your typical thrice or four-times married fifty year old nurse, heavy calipers around her mouth and a favorite stool at the gin mill, I'd actually feel nothing, not happy, not sad, not envious, not disappointed, it would all just be what it is, and, if it was interesting, I'd write it down, and if it wasn't, I'd make something up to go in its place. I do think some things are funny, but I am not amused by them, myself. I poke fun at my country, but that's to prevent my work being categorized as pornography, i.e., as gratuitous sex with no redeeming value. My non-feeling is that you are headed for absolute and total catastrophe, and deserve nothing less. This isn't zombie land, it's marshmallow land, a little pot, a little tobacco, seven or eight thousand words a day, ho-hum, yawn, stretch, pinch Samantha's other-worldly butt, and repeat. Since she's getting more wifely about the bedroom day by day, this may change of course, and who knows, after a Rip Van Winkle like twenty plus years, I may wake up to find, yes, Virginia, there is love, happiness, joy, pleasure, confidence, enthusiasm, pain, misery, frustration, fear, hope and hopelessness, who knows? Meantime, I don't live anywhere near Cleveland, and if that doesn't make my life what they call giddily happy, isn't it possible Anne's repeated climaxing in the arms of another, and presumably better, male, as well as his frequent climaxing inside her, might have had some kind of permanent affect? It seems almost unfair to add another hook at this stage of the game. You've got your own survival, you've got the million-word imperative, and now you've got poor Samantha tasked with reanimating an apparently world-weary husk and defeatist shell of a man. If you were literate, cool, and savvy, these would be enough to keep you reading, but you're ignorant, boorish, and monumentally stupid, so we'd better get back to pretty Tina and her dad and Forest, now all grown up.

I liked my finger and ran it firmly along the back of Jose. We'd never played any of that kind of game, probably fastidiousness rather than fear of aids or hepatitis, but, anyway, it hadn't happened before. I found him, toyed a little, and slipped slightly inside his athletic male body. He quivered and shook, and, honestly, looking back, I suppose I might have been teasing a little. I mean I'd hate to think I was trying to make him spray inside Tina so I could mount between her long, slim legs and feel the tingle of his always very thick and salty semen on my own swollen and supersensitive glans. I'm not that kind of guy. I let another guy release himself inside my wife and never even tried to kill him with a slingshot or a bow and arrow, much less a twenty-two. I think I was, honestly, just trying to enhance the experience, if being inside a wriggling, panting ten year old can be enhanced, in the first place. I massaged, in and out an inch or two for a minute or two, then kissed my long term lover on his sweating, athletic back, and rose from the bed to again look down on their young, mating bodies. "I wonder if I could write what I see so fully, so accurately, and so well," I thought to myself, "that an entire nation would clap itself on the forehead, like the poor guy who didn't have a vegetable juice, thinking, `Wow, I could have had a she-eight!'"

Yes, I realized it was a bit of a stretch, but even motionless, her arms and slim legs around him, his fierce masculinity contrasted with her delicate femininity, they were of such a beauty of parts, made so entirely whole, that someone, somewhere was for sure missing the boat in saying thou shalt not. Only the devil could prevent this, again, even their lying motionless cradled in her willing arms, solidly and forever between her eager young legs, to say nothing of how they'd look and the feelings that would course heavily and hotly through each of their superb you bodies when his athletic trunk began surging against her, and her tiny feet began insisting on him. How was a nation so obsessed with the styling of its cars, costumes, furnishings, and accessories be missing out on the beauty of a happy girl simply being a girl? The hard part of the equation is that as we grew too fat and cumbersome to fit into said cars, so the beauty of adult coupling with child is being ameliorated, seemingly on a daily bases. (A good working definition of an outright pervert is the individual who would loiter at the walrus pool at the zoo to watch a four-hundred pound father inseminate a daughter half his size.) I mean, obviously on a daily basis, because I think the scientific community will agree that never an hour goes by when we, as a society, weigh less than we did the hour before, half-time during the Superbowl, duly noted as an exception. That's a typical example of poking fun, but is it funny? Personally, I don't see the humor in it, but Anne probably has shared any number of morning chuckles and giggles with Tom Cruise, and, since he was described by others as pretty much a Marriott Motel type, I probably wouldn't find an excess of levity in their pillow talk, either.

One thing I should add, in the name of perspective. You picture me aboard that Greyhound, northbound on I-25, all miserable and bent out of shape, and, I suppose her kissing me the last time the way she had never kissed me before, with its open statement of the service she was about to proved her new penis, did have me off my feed for awhile. However, when I reached Denver I checked in at my moronic cousin's colossal English half-timber on Emerson Street -- Ellen would be exactly dumb enough to live on a street because it was name for out ancestor -- and, finding the company richly imbued with the paint-drying, grass-growing monotony of the cookie cutter liberal, I rode, for the first time in my life, a city bus. This conveyance had the advantage of passing through a tawdry neighborhood. This neighborhood had what turned out to be the first, and almost only, gay bar of my life. This gay bar had a blond, six four, at least. This blond had an apartment in the neighborhood, and a car to make the trip. This apartment had, I remember, a Bang & Olefson stereo, and, a bedroom. This bedroom had a bed. This blond beauty, when he heard I hadn't cum for three days, what with riding around on busses, being tossed to the dogs, and the like, was as thrilled as a twelve year old with a two-hundred-cubic-centimeter dirt bike. I honestly thought he was going to call his parents and invite them over. Talk about a new toy! He played with me for three hours. We made out, we showered, we told secrets, we again and again came within inches and seconds, then couldn't bear the thought of it ending, and backed away to have a cigarette or a toke or a drink, then returned to his bed. I can pretty well imagine what Tom Cruise was doing with Anne at the same time, but somehow it wasn't in my heart to envy either of them. Perhaps they conceived together that first night, leading eventually to her wantonness as a mother of two, when women come into their own, having successfully mated twice, both thanking their husbands for their babies, and wanting another. For her sake, I hope so, because she couldn't help being pretty sore if she dumped me, and six hours later I was having my first homosexual experience as an adult, with, in spite of our meeting place, a tall, slim, athletic, and inexperienced partner who wasn't reticent about thinking I'd pretty much dropped in from heaven. We were naked, we were beautiful, we were hot, we went on and on, and he was so excited he wanted to cum off first, because I'd told him how much I liked watching Jon Laurie cum when I was a nine-year-old camper. And that's not to say we didn't try using our mouths and tongues and lips on each other's hugely swollen boners, because we did, again and again, but we were both pretty proud and full of ourselves (literally, I suppose), and wanted to show off. He did by allowing me to gently nurse and stroke him to a powerful ending on my face. I lay with my hands behind my head, my hips thrust high, spraying repeatedly two feet in the air, until my belly and chest were slicked and his mouth and tongue were all over me, and especially salty against my own mouth and tongue. Regrettably, he was of the drinking class, without the compensating virtue of being a heavy reader, so it was a one-night stand.

If statistics played any role in Anne's fortune, she's probably wishing to this very day that Tom Cruise was her one-night stand. If she's had an extraordinary run of luck over the last twenty-plus years, then that's probably how feels about me, assuming she doesn't bear such a grudge she wishes I'd been a no-night stand. It amuses me, at least in the abstract, to know I've probably enjoyed my wife far more in the last few years than T.C. has. I take her, forever young, slim, tight, long-haired, girlish, and fantastic, repeatedly, picturing their first nudity together, her sounds and touches at her first full acceptance of his body (his law degree safely filed away), the expression on her face and the look in her eyes during the last minute of the inevitable fulfillment of both his and her hot, eager wills, and, as they sigh and pant more gently together, her hand traveling, as a female's will, to find how wet he left her, and so judge his true masculinity.

Add Denver, add Jose, add Steven, add Samantha, add the sizzling career, with no parallel in the history of art, add the Caribbean, add the ever growing unearned income, and the reader might be forgiven for wondering what the f--- I'm crying about. I'm not crying. Unless beset by accident or other fickle misfortune, Tom and Anne got exactly what they deserved. I'm a writer. I'm writing. And gentle jesus, did I ever, in spades, no joke intended, get everything I deserve, as did my lymphoma infected mother, my empty-mansioned sister, and my one man Ritalin pharmacist brother, plus numerous others. Come to think of it, I can't think of anyone, offhand, who didn't get, or get denied, pretty much what they earned. Of the six student pilots killed while I was in general aviation, each got what they deserved, although there were two sort-of innocent passengers involved, `sort-of' because they hung around with, or were married to the yo-yos, in the first place, and I would not have instructed any but one, who was half way okay, and victim of a mechanical failure. Of course, I was involved in a bad crash, myself, and, since it's a perfect example of what I'm saying, I'll admit I got exactly what I deserved. First, I never should have flown in such a decrepit old plane, second, I should never have allowed a three hundred passenger to ride along, but, having committed two errors, when we lost an engine in a snow squall, I kept the wings level, on instruments, at VMC, for ten minutes, until the hills around Bradford, Pennsylvania, met with a wings-level Piper Apache, that trivial lovers will be happy to hear, once belonged to Arthur Godfrey. It did the forest no good, and tore the airplane to pieces, but wings level, at eighty miles an hour, into the canopy, without a panicked last-second pull up, I probably could have repeated the stunt numerous times without serious injury. Of course, I like to put a little polish on my work, so have to admit that the passenger in the right seat, actually the aircraft's owner, had undone his seatbelt during the flight, to adjust the heater linkage behind the instrument panel, and had forgotten to re-buckle, and still walked away with a minor cut or two.

From any and all angles, Jose and Tina looked erotically sensational. Proud, hard, and masculine. Soft, buttery, sweet, and, even almost completely out of sight under her stag, feminine. I lay with them both, massaged, stroked, and fondled them both. Molested them as individually as I could, but, for the most part, letting my hand run between his rough, rugged, hard, muscular body, to her hot, silky-smooth softness. I played with their faces, interfering wantonly, if very briefly, with some of their kisses. I ran my finger, lying at their side, between them to masturbate Tina, and was so startled by her electric response to my slightest tentative touch, I stopped. She was in the middle of her story, and Jose was obviously going to absolutely flood her, in all probability more wildly than he ever had my chest or mouth, in his own timing, so I withdrew my errant finger from between their sweating young bodies, moving my right hand to very high between his powerful legs, from behind, palm down so I could gently grip him with my probing fingers and share his loss of control if it happened during the child's story. After that, at least for awhile, it was just lying at Jose's left elbow, occasionally kissing and biting his sweating shoulder, moving my right hand from his penis to massage his tense lower back, and listening to the little girl's pretty voice.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Darling?" the adult Harry said to his beautiful daughter, "did you like the story?"

"Mmm," the girl purred, "I just don't know why you didn't stay closer over the years, or even get married; that's been all the rage for the last few years."

"Good question," her father said, "but that's life. We often do move on to new things, new people, instead of cherishing what we have and had. Usually this works out for the better, sometimes not. Forest and I lost touch in high school, but guess who got a delicious, delightful, and delectable pixie, sprite, wiseguy, darling in return?"

"The dude who won the Powerball?" the girl asked. Her playful response startled both adult males, who suddenly realized they'd won an ethereal jackpot without even buying a ticket (this, a rough parallel to the Virgin's conception). They looked over her slim, athletic body into each other's eyes, nodding silently in thanks and affirmation. To think she cooked and cleaned, and, total boggle beyond human comprehension by half a billion light years, could, with encouragement, reproduce herself repeatedly. Oh, freaking, wow.

"Lo-ho-ho-ho-zer," Harry laughed, imitating Jim Carey, "he'd have given the prize to have driven over here with you."

"And I wouldn't have taken it," the sweetie laughed, "unless I ended up here, with you and Forest."

"You may not turn out to be a great businesswoman," Forest said.

"I know I'm too young to make these decisions for myself," the girl responded, "but my idea would be to have six or eight kids with the two of you, and let one of them be the tycoon."

Again the adults looked across the child at each other. What would be wrong with that? In ten-thousand years, what would be wrong with that? In every aspect, from buckling the kids' boots, to gross income, to the death or disability of any of them, three would be better than two. From getting her pregnant, to surviving her, three would beat a pair. William F. Buckley, Jr., the sailor, makes quite an issue of three forming a gang of two, with the third ostracized. No problem, after the separation, there'd still be a partnership to carry on, perhaps stronger for the omission, as Anne was surely a more ardent and active lover, having rid herself of me. (Something the Cruise family may get to experience again as these huge battlewagon novels blast their way into public consciousness. They'll be able, once again, to relive excluding me the first time. Talk about an enduring wedding present, a gift that keeps on giving.)

"Unfortunately," Harry replied to his daughter, "a cat drinks by curling its tongue to the rear, when you'd bet a thousand dollars on the common sense supposition that it drinks curling it forward. So common sense does not fit all scenarios, which is a good thing, or everyone would fall off Australia, but is a bad thing when it comes to sane familial relationships. A no-touchy daddy can abuse and neglect his daughter a hundred legal ways until she ends up a frosted-haired, silver-nailed hireling of the Dairy Queen empire, while a reading, traveling, hiking, boating, baseball loving, super dad can go to jail for years off a single shower."

"Isn't the system now proven so defective that people just pretty well ignore it; you know, play the game a little, pay lip service, and do what they want?"

"Yes," Forest answered the girl, "but there's still the danger of someone making a case because they don't like you, when they'd accept three times what you're doing from someone they happened to like, and you don't have to be convicted of anything to run up a hundred grand in legal fees, or lose your job or your friends."

"Then it might be a good idea to make some new friends," the girl said, raising her face to the handsome new man in her life for a kiss.

"It is a matter of drawing lines," Harry continued, "and it's always the cheap, easy shot to be an iconoclast or disenfranchised nihilist, wearing a chip the size of Africa on your shoulder. At the same time, the system can't exactly come to a stop to draw up a scheme for every couple, threesome, foursome, or group who think they have found the answer to communal, extended-family living. It's not that society won't do it, or doesn't want to do it, but more that society can't do it, but it can do better, much better, just by backing off arbitrary, mindless negative involvement, which is usually involvement for its own sake, not to help somebody or keep a truly dangerous criminal off the streets. Playing the game. Going through the motions. The only good thing that ever comes of it is that out of the hundreds of girls traumatized ten times more by the system than the perpetrator, or rapist, some will become so dysfunctional they end up in the psychic court of last resort, which happens to be the lending library. Out of these hundreds, or thousands, we'll end up, twenty years down the road, with a few pretty fair writers. Otherwise, the picture is entirely negative. Everyone involved in it starts by going though the buzz saw. How much they lose depends on a variety of factors, but it's a pretty safe bet that everyone losses something. And the oddest thing about it is if you're hillbilly overt, and drag your stiff-legged, dirty-legged, dirty-haired, half-starved daughter around town, tummy bulging, no official will lift a finger or say a word. Meantime, let you or I or any respectable person be the subject of the slightest rumor or hint that something's going on, and we'll be in the cop shop `till dawn."

"And I was going to shine so for Show-and-Tell on Monday," the smashing girl sighed, mopping her hand across her brow with enough drama to paralyze her entire audience with a fear of starting to laugh and not being able to stop until Monday, in short, in not sharing with her anything TO tell.

They lay together, breathing softly, for some time. "Darling," Harry finally said to her, "I have what may be a really bad idea, but I want to tell you about it, anyway, okay?"

"As long as it has nothing to do with leaving," the girl said.

"It's about a hundred times more complicated than that," the man said, "which is why I keep going over it, and why I think it might be right up your alley."

"What is it?" the ten year old asked.

"What if you lost your virginity with someone besides one of us?" Harry said. "Just went out on your own, and came back here, assuming you wanted to, later tonight, or even in the morning?"

"Oh, Dad, wow," the girl whispered.

"What do you think, Forest?" he then asked.

"Lying here for who knows how long, drawing pictures in our minds of who she's with, and how she's responding to them, you mean?" he asked, "instead of cumming with her, ourselves? For sure, it would be nothing we'd ever forget," he had to acknowledge.

"Don't you think it might be sort of a symbol of permanence," Harry said, nod doggedly, but wishing to pursue the idea, "that one night, amongst the three of us, means little or nothing, because it's the next night that's important, and the next. If we have to work, or travel, or attend to any number and variety of affairs, they come first, and our sleeping together is always secondary to the overall vitality of the relationship."

"I don't know," Forest mused, "if I were a novelist I might stick something like that in as a plot thickener or word-count extender; but how it would work out in real life? Hmm?"

"Is that a Yes?" the girl whispered.

"Do you want it to be?" her dad asked.

"It would give us something to talk about on the drive back home," the girl observed, "and I love both of you so much, a week with Brad Pitt wouldn't make the slightest difference in how I feel."

"We're taking you pretty far afield," Harry said, "first the business problem, or former problem, at the core of our being together, then your being with Vargas Real for two or three hours, tomorrow, and now dispatching you to find your first lover. It might be a good idea to buy you a puppy on the way home, so you will have something to talk about in class on Monday."

"If I were the tactician," Tina responded, "I'd buy the girl a Glock, because even telling about that, much less showing it, would gum up every officious psyche for a hundred miles, and, with that lot down for the count, we could get away with me turning up pregnant in seventh grade and no one would stop ducking long enough to notice."

"She has a point," both males nodded in affirmation, without having to articulate the words, but, nah, it was a stretch: not feasible, even if by a tantalizingly small a margin. Some busybody would be sure to give a heads-up, and, while the level of obesity was beyond extreme, a slim face along with slim limbs and a big belly could hardly help but let the cat out of the bag. Of course, maybe the pixie was just trying to be funny, to ease the atmosphere in light of the cross currents that were bound to be part of a child's transition from dolls to dicks, and to be sure everyone got the most out of the resort over the upcoming weekend. It all bore much pondering and consideration. Fortunately, a methodical, one-step-at-a-time approach suited the temperament of each member of the threesome, a fact which undoubtedly had much to do with their being a threesome, in the first place. They talked in whispers, fondling the young female, passing her lithe, athletic body between themselves, wrestling with each other and the pixie, pretending to eat her toes and fingers, as if she were a child, and indulging in a little bit of brief tickling. They licked here her, kissed her there, and caressed her everywhere. The liked her, loved her, adored her, and came back for more. The ten year old was open with her tongue and hands, learning quickly this and even faster picking up that, only avoiding deliberate touching of their swollen uncircumcised penises, in the manner of a mature child with the good upbringing and good manners to save the best for last. Both males thrust gently against her slim, white body, masturbating themselves and each other against the particularly spicy flesh high on her inner thighs, gasping and tensing with urgency, before backing away to toy with her in less fulsome ways. Neither did they kiss her on the lips, instinctively realizing this would be something she would want to save for another day and a boy close to her own age. Violating all the rules, they nonetheless set their own rigid standards of behavior, decency, and morality as inviolable and absolute as the stoning, chopping, burning, and drowning priorities of a rural Muslim village.

Much of the time the males lay nose to nose, their cheeks low on her smooth, white belly, their hands fondling her between her long slender legs, as they tried to come to grips with what it would be like to ravish her orally, in turn, sharing, tongue to tongue, the salty seed of a third, strange, adult male. This left them on the horns of a dilemma, because both wanted to, a, finger her, newly wet, and, b, experience the salty sperm of her first true lover, while, c, never in a hundred years ending what was now going on between the three of them.

The state of perfect equilibrium lasted most of an hour. At the end of this time, the sensitive and alert child noted a rising level of urgency in her male companions, and was bright enough to interpret it as corresponding with a rising level of discomfort. At ten, she'd heard a thing or two in school, and realized matters would only get worse unless she took an active role in making them better. But how? She liked the idea of returning to the pool area, half a wildfire, for a mount that was free of incestuous taint. After all, that was as innocent as she'd ever be from this moment on, but, before it happened, before she walked hand in hand in her conservative little two piece bathing suit off with a handsome male to another bungalow, she owed an overwhelming debt of gratitude to her father and Forest for not treating her like some little bubble-headed, nail-polishing mirror queen. Two phrases ran through her mind: jerking off' and. blow-job'. The boys used them more than the girls, but that was natural enough when she looked at her father and her honorary uncle, for they were more than girls. Could she interpret them on her own? Neither her dad nor Forest was anything to do with any kind of jerk that she'd ever heard of, and the process of elimination also precluded their going off. Where? Why? When? Nor could she exactly see exchanging blows with them, or them with each other, whether they were on the job, or at home. So, it must be some kind of slang or vernacular of the street. If she used her hands on one of their hugely swollen and rock hard penises, wouldn't she be jerking on? Surely it wouldn't come off, that would obviously be fatal, and catastrophically messy -- out of the question. But men certainly had to do something physical to get girls pregnant, so maybe some part or some thing did come off. If you pounded on them? Creepsy must, they looked so sensitive, how could blows, or even one blow, do anything but hurt? Of course, she could ask, achieve empowerment through a meaningful dialogue and resolve issues as a byproduct of scads of quality time, which could hardly help but further the bonding process.

Girl thoughts. The boys were thinking, too. Yes, they were pleased, who wouldn't have been? She was a delight, a fancy tickler par excellence, a smoldering, smoking, sensation multiplying senses and sensibilities, not by X, but by sex; squaring heaven, cubing earth; the sun, the clouds, the rains, the rivers, the oceans, the seas; the forests, the plains, the woods and trees; all birds; all bees. Not, by any means, a roll in the hay, a trifle, a plaything, a trinket, a toy. She was a total major-league bash, a heavenly smash, the opposite of a market crash, a Caddy, not a Nash, and worth a ton of cash. Porking her in situ, whatever transient pleasures it might offer, whatever relief, and for relief they were all but howling, might have been tempting, but Harry and Forest weren't those kinds of guys. In the lobby, on an easel, they'd seen, and, distracted, hardly noticed, a poster announcing: Kid Carlson, King of the Clarinet, and Kids of the King. A dance. Good clean fun. Convention. And what really did it for the doting father was the mental image of his absolute cutie pie in high heels and stockings.

"Sweetie," he said, "how's about you run in and take a shower for a few minutes while I talk to your uncle Forest?"

Ah, there's a little break. She doesn't have to undress or anything, so just grins, kisses her menfolk, and we see her slim frame headed across the carpeting of the suite, and, in a few moments the hiss of the shower head and clunk of the heavy glass door.

There is a difference in not smoking pot, but I'm trying to figure out what it is. For sure, the word count's taken a nose dive, but yesterday I cleaned the refrigerator, washed walls, and caught up with domestic stuff. Samantha was here for much of the day, and I think I was able to focus on and review out status perhaps more incisively than when I'm all gone way out stoned on weed, or whatever one does on the stuff, or, in my case, doesn't do. The clearest difference is in the field of dreams. I noted that in June, also pot free. Much shorter, sharper, clearer, and more memorable dreams. Just now I was, in dreamland, visiting some kind of institution on the west coast in my old VW 411. When I returned to the car I found the rear deck open (where the engine is) and a note that I needed something electrical done, along with signs of a minor fire. Then, along comes John Goodman, from "Rosanne" to help fix whatever electrical problem there is. Very uninteresting, but sharp as a tack, and, since the car I had was yellow, and the car in the dream was yellow, that answers the question about dreaming in monochrome, which some people say is most common. I'll have to see about the word-count thing. I do take days off from time to time, a day off being defined as under three-thousand words, even as a dope fiend, so it may take awhile to generate usable statistics, by which time the money will be in, the ganja supply resorted, and things restored to abnormal. Also, the domestic agenda. Am I going to suddenly start painting the place, or chopping my own property? I actually like not smoking, not having to waste time opening packs, lighting cigarettes, and emptying ashtrays. I see on television about cravings, but feel them only in respect to Samantha. I smoke because I like the flavor of tobacco, and the fact it serves as a reward which is free of calories. Pot is about the same. I don't miss it when I don't have it, wouldn't spend more than three dollars a day for it, but find, all things being equal, it does vastly extend my work day.

Delton finally showed up with his arm almost back to normal, so there's one good deed that apparently paid off. If my luck is in he'll stop by this (Sunday) morning and I'll be able to dispatch him to Malcolm Dale's to get a carton of cigarettes (pronounced, locally, cartoon, which you quickly get used to) and ten ball-ups, which are dollar lots of marijuana wrapped in foil. Stupid. They used to be wrapped in brown paper, which, if you flicked them away at night, were hard for the Babylon (police) to see in the dark. As I wrote this, Queenie showed up, so the mission goes to Daisy who needs to get to Belize City to visit Junior, who's in jail, and, as about the nicest kid I ever met in my life - very much the reason I help them, in the first place. (If I ever do get put away for inappropriate attention to Samantha, or possession, I'll have more friends inside, than I do outside.)

So, I'm cleaning and sober, the house is a freaking masterpiece of domestic focus, and I seem to be rattling away about the same as ever. It occurs to me, even after all these years, I still have something extraordinary in common with Anne Whatever Her Name is Now, nee, Fairchild. We both would agree she's the world's stupidest woman. She, for ever having dated, loved, or marrying me, me, for her having divorced a wealthy, funny, attractive, committed artist and husband over huffs and puffs of nothing. Terrific guy that I am in so many respects, I send her brother copies of my work so he can forward them to her, ha-ha, so she'll know how right she was all along. Steve McQueen offered Ali McGraw a million dollars to come back to him, and I'll bet my former wife and princess of herself wouldn't have me gift-wrapped in a billion. Women are big on decisions like that. Stupid, but big. Oddly enough, if she was any semblance of her former self, and wanted to paint, fucking-eh seriously, I'd take her back, though not at the cost of Samantha.

Here's one for the book. Smoking stains the teeth, right? I don't have a mirror in my room, or bathroom, knowing I'm about as cute as they come at my age, and having moved the dresser, with mirror, into Linden's room, when he was here. So I was a little horrified to find my choppers pretty badly stained. Out of idle curiosity, and inspired by a young girlfriend, I experimented with scraping my teeth with the blade of a craft knife. Believe it or not, it worked beautifully, and in ten minutes all trace of staining, which, in my case, would be tea and tobacco, were gone. My guess is four-ought steel wool might work, too. Also in the believe it or not category, is the fact that Samantha brushes her teeth with Colgate and Clorox, straight from the bottle. I've never heard of that, and do wonder about the long-term effect, although, for sure, her smile is dazzling at the moment.

Speaking of clean, haven't we wandered off and left someone in the shower?

"What hath god wrought?" If memory serves, those are the first words transmitted over the transatlantic cable. "What hath the salon wrought?" Harry and Forest breathed in stunned admiration as Tina emerged from The Play Pen's youth-oriented House of Mischievous Miracles . Hair high, shoulders bare, legs forever from under the hem of little black dress to her first pair of heels, eyes huge do to the touch of Panda Bear Pete, former makeup artist behind bars, a pearl choker -- I knew good and damn well my haberdashic ignorance was going to one day stifle me as a novelist -- against the ivory white of her flat chest; this bracelet, those earrings, the other bauble, that accent, adding, in a radiating symphony, to the tall, simple, brown-haired, brown-eyed elegance that needed freaking squat to stop the show.

She walked, tripping a mesmerizing version of the light fantastic in her new pumps (I hope), between the tall males in their bib and tucker, moon above, quiet lighting along the pathway below, setting their step to the music flowing from the auditorium, half kids going to a sock hop, half adults attending a state occasion. Lots of everything for everybody, and, and I'm not bragging here, as fine a send-off for a long legged tomboy virgin as any proud poppa could dream, fantasize, or imagine, at least on this planet.

As I've said before, though no walk in the park, write enough long novels, and you to catch the occasional break. In this case, it's Queenie and Samantha going off to spend the morning together, after dancing punta together in my west bedroom window. Not quite a proud poppa watching them shine on each other, their contrasting beauties adding a healthy ten percent to one plus one. Risky business, of course, because as far as I know, they could be heading to Louise's boyfriend's house, who might have a friend... And, if they didn't have garden lights and music wafting onto the evening air from the auditorium, they didn't need it. What a freaking pair. To try to guide them into more aggression in the housekeeping department, so their relationships will last, when I'm outta here, and be friend to both, and lover to one, is a down-home version of the million-pager. It's freaking music that one enhances the other, working from the dynamic duo to the novel, not vice versa, because they have no idea I'm even a writer, just that I'm always home, typing. They have no concept of myself as artist, and I'll bet in the whole of the coming year, they never once ask for an autograph. I try to impress in other ways. While they were gone, three hours, I cut my hair, kneaded ten pounds of tortilla dough, whipped up a tub of spicy chili and onion rice, cleaned the house, left the kitchen immaculate, entertained and fed Delton and Simpson, and wrote a thousand words. Guess I've earned a cup of tea. More than, it turns out, for Samantha and Randy just arrived. He's eating my rice with banana, says it's great. More than.

Dancing anyone?

Tina wore a lily on her left wrist. Guess what it signified. Every male of the hundred or more knew. Every eye of the two hundred or more, the number actually odd because of a lean, Nordic athlete wearing a black patch, flashed hard and lingered a long moment. Not a murmur from the thirty something females. Guess what that signified.

Tina's eyes wide from, believe it or not, a touch of belladonna (proving I know at least something of my craft), saw everything as a hazy blur of color and shape. She squeezed the arms of her very lucky seeing-eye dogs, and they guided her through the reception line, where Vargas plucked her like a prize rose and swept her off to the orchestra's lilting accompaniment. Formalities over, Harry and Forest were escorted to a floorside table, and, alcohol denied as ludicrous overkill, served a house punch consisting of equal parts grape juice and ginger ale, to which had been added an additional ten percent of strong tea. At The Play Pen (yes, you loyal readers, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Plunkett Group) even the punch was otherworldly.

It was a dance, was a dance, was a dance. A nicer-country club ambience, with two notable exceptions. The men weren't all outrageously young, and three were easily in their fifties, but there was not one single extra pound in a dozen, and, the girls were young, with Tina approximately of a middle age. Five of the girls wore blue pansies on their left wrists, so there'd be no surprises in the bridal suits. Everyone knew what blue signified. Can you guess?

Six virgins, Tina in the middle, one wearing a becoming combination of blue and white. They whirled to the music, colors flying, fit males panting, lithe girls laughing, the Kids of the King not averse to a little raggae and rap in their mix. Sometimes the serendipity thing really has some kick. Samantha's dancing to Lucky Dube "This Choice I Made", with Randy setting at my left shoulder clapping time. You know those balls with all the little mirrors? Who needs one? Now Kira has her own chair to dance in as she looks west to the mountains, a sight lost on her because Randy's taken her plastic flute. Now she's pointing at something, the setting sun playing through her hair, and me thinking black thoughts about Linden for thieving the camera.

In fantasy land the band played on. Fathers and daughters. Big brothers and little sisters, uncles and nieces or nephews, odd couples, four and five footers mismatched with men for the most part six feet and over They did the bunny hop, a ten-minute twist mix, Bee-Gee greats, and The Kids could more than half play Abba's "Nina Pretty Ballerina".

Midnight came, and it was not without trepidation that the males watched the fateful clock, for surely at least some of these girls must turn to pumpkins. Nymphs they were, however, and nymphs they remained. The orchestra slowed its pace, reprising Righteous Brothers and Elvis standards. Over the next hour a pecking order slowly evolved, a circle of four or five males circling each virgin, with one or two attaching themselves to each of the girls with a red or blue flower. Less time on the floor, more huddled at the tables, by consensus a loyalty bond building so that for the last half-hour each pair or group remained intact. A final waltz extended into the darkness of guttering candles and an energy level quite out of place at the end of a long evening.

While the Plunkett enterprise was perhaps light on bowing and scraping servitude, it was nonetheless run with a weather eye for showmanship. The male or alpha male of the evening with each girl ordered the bower of his choice, leading the female and her attendent males, if any, to their individual creation. There were sailor motifs, summer camp motifs, along with their scouting cousins, and a variety of scenarios from a simulated coal mine to a radio broadcast booth. Half were novel, the other half variations of the standard honeymoon suite.

Tina had nodded at Gregg Killington, a tall, rangy Japanese American an hour earlier, and his if-I'm-a-winner choice had been neatly executed by the competent staff of the resort. His bungalow had been re-decorated as an Oriental tea room, and Harry and Forest nodded to their host as they entered the mild and lovely room. Gregg bad his guests change, asking, as was his prerogative, Tina to remain in her black sheath rather than donning the traditional silks of Asia. As he taught his bride of the evening the rudiments of the tea ceremony, the ten year old's father and honorary uncle emerged from the bathroom and bedroom of the suite, along with two sailors, Cliff and Dennis, both boyish ensigns in the Australian navy. At Gregg's nod, they knelt at the table as their host helped Tina, his left arms gently around her slim waist, pour each porcelain cup. Harry, in turn, nodded at the delicate beauty of a former farmhand and tomboy, and the girl allowed Gregg to bring her delicate face to his for their first welcoming kiss. Quickly, it was back to the tea, and all six sat knowing there was no place saner nor more likely to be happy than the place they were.

From here on, the play was in Tina's hands. As Gregg's touches became more intimate the girl nodded at the males kneeling around the table, then at the bedroom. This was typical, but it was also possible for a girl to be alone with her lover, if she wished, either to return to them, or spend the night behind a closed door while the males satisfied themselves and each other as they fantasized about the couple in the adjoining bedroom.

The males stood, each huge against the silk of his robe, and the girl led Gregg through the paper door. She placed her father and Forest a foot and a half from the waist of the low bed, with the two Australians at her feet. She and Gregg left the bedroom, returning in a moment as if coming home from an evening out. The tall male carried the girl across the threshold and placed her on the seat at the dresser, kissing her hair and unclipping her pearl necklace. "I hade a beautiful evening, darling," the girl said, playing her role quietly, "do you want to go check the girls before you unzip me?"

"You were the princess of the ball," the handsome young husband said into her hair, leaving Tina for a few moments. The girl caught her dad's eye in the mirror and beamed a shy smile of thanks. They might someday coin a term, "Playpen Brave", for the look he gave her back. It was illegal, immoral, and thoroughly indecent, and it beat the average back seat by about ten million miles, so there was nothing downcast in his countenance, rather, intellect being what it is, just courage greatly enhanced by the beauty and grace of the tableau which played slowly on the young adult's return from checking on the couple's sleeping daughters.

I've used this line before, but developments seem to favor using it again. Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the novel...

Who should arrive but Queenie's notorious thirteen year old cousin. A very bad girl, from many reports. A tall, slim total wildcat, willowy and flat chested as a child, but with the look of several women. Noah was very curt. He's from a church group in Indiana which has handled the adoption of three of Daisy's kids. We met' under strained circumstances, longish story, when I was evicting Shirley, Rhageedha's mother, for laziness below and beneath any call of duty. He showed up with a stove and gas tank, after I'd asked her to leave several times (she had a perfectly good place to go), and I finally had to blow my stack. Interesting variant on Christianity, which one assumes he espouses. I've probably spent four thousand dollars, one thing and another, keeping Daisy, four kids, and five dogs not only off the street, where they were headed, but fed, clothed, booked and in school; cooking, cleaning, and supervising homework to the tune of some hundreds of hours, without so much as hinting at anything illicit with any of them. One would think that might merit a nod of respect and a civil hello, instead of an uh'. Alex, my landlord, is a former YMCA officer, diplomat, and lay clergyman; I've been perfectly frank with him about what I believe and write, and he doesn't seem to mind. Detective writers don't kill (except Agatha Christie, who apparently tried once), and science fiction writers don't fly rockets. Airline pilots and deep-sea divers very rarely write successful stories of flying and underwater drama, and so on. Being a novelist is being an artist, and there is no more connection than there is with a real sunflower and one rendered at the hand of Vincent Van Gogh. In fact, he got it about right, because there is no less connection, either.

So the uptight moralizing preacher, or, maybe he was just tired at the end of a long day, and the shoot with both hips thirteen-year-old, wicked as they come, all playing out in real time.

By the way, since we've got enough pots boiling to stand back from the stove for a moment, I mentioned cutting my own hair. I've been doing this for thirty-odd years, have been to a barber three times in as many decades. While I was out shopping with Jose one time, I found a neat little two-piece comb gizmo that holds two razor blades. I think I made a mistake, once, but otherwise get slick razor cuts that last for two or three months, where a trim at the barber seems to last about as many days. Several people here have asked who my `stylist' was -- sorry -- and I tried to cut Linden's hair once, with zero success, so it's an idiosyncratic thing. The handle on my beloved comb device broke today, but it's just as effective without it, so should last a few more years. Actually, the biggest challenge is to avoid nicking yourself on the razors while you work, especially, your ears. I've trimmed with a Bic razor, but it takes three times longer. I don't even need a mirror, which brings up an interesting story I saw at three in the morning on CNN. It was a feature on blind barbers in India. Super idea. That's the kind of excellent thinking shown once, and never repeated so that we may learn more about Israel.

Interesting thought concerning Girl X, my new tenant. If she's as promiscuous as legend has it, why is she not more developed? My sister was active with my brother from the age of eight or nine, and she matured very early and fully. Audrey, of "Stonington Stories", was active with her older brother, and she also developed when she was eleven or so. Then again, the girl in red, because I was just downstairs, may have aids. Bad answer. Shook hands with Noah, seems very nice. We should be friends, or something, having more than a bit in common, but it's a strangish world here at the brink of the rain forest. Why, I do believe, people have written books about it.

Anyway, a great Sunday, and fitting payoff to hundreds of lesser namesakes. I think it should be abolished; the loneliness and treading water much more damaging than anything to do with the church is beneficial.

Her name is Kara, and she is wild looking as tigers. Totally intriguing. Just what Samantha and Queenie need for a little playmate.

I should reference here, that Sim managed crediting me some weed. Wow, in debt to my drug habit. Five dollars. Will I make it through the crises? I mention it, apropos of I know not what, because I think it makes no difference in my work, whatever. The time I'll know is at two tomorrow morning, when I'm passing the ten thousand word mark after a long day of domestic activity. I try to expound on this, because of the staggering statistics and fiscal and psychological cost to the nation, but find it difficult, because there is so little to say. I think a good analogy is as follows: Getting stoned while flying a light aircraft under VFR conditions would probably make you a slightly better pilot. The key here is that pot makes you more attentive to what you know. You'd be more attuned to your check list, to balance your fuel load, to waypoints and radio changes. On the other hand, flying in instruments might not be a good idea. Because you are more attentive to what you know, you tend to block new, unfamiliar information. A good pilot, flying familiar instrument procedures, would probably execute with more precision and forethought, but an amateur, bombarded with strange situations, a specific example would be back-course holding after a missed-approach, might be less capable than a stone sober pilot of equal talent and experience. I can give another specific example, this time something that happened to me, personally. I was driving from once house to another in Concord. Margaret Alcock, a magna cum laude graduate of B.U., and long-time girlfriend, was with me. We got half a minute or so into our trip and she started laughing. I had the wipers on, and it wasn't raining. Again, this was a byproduct of being attentive; I was listening to her, and at the time it just didn't seem very important whether the wipers were on, or not. That would be an extreme reaction to smoking marijuana. Having said that, I should also note that I think many things to do with the computer might be difficult to accomplish with a buzz on. On the other hand, if you were checking code you'd already written, it might, again, by making you more attentive, help you find a bug. In temporary summary, "Consumer Reports", hands-down the most fastidious possible mass-market publication, gave marijuana all green lights, pointing out the ripping bias of publications such as "The Reader's Digest." I have a specific memory along this line. A radio column by Paul Harvey who claimed pot was five times more lethal than cigarettes because the smokers held the gasses in their lungs for an extended period of time. He neglected to say that a healthy pot smokers consumes one, perhaps two `cigarettes' a day, and that there has never been the remotest link between marijuana and lung disease of any kind. Jamaicans are born and bred on it, with zero impact, aside from the political machinery which harasses and entangles them.

I acknowledge the home-wrecking impact, but its source is the high cost of the product, not its narcotic affect which is akin to coffee, and about one percent of amyl nitrate, poppers, which are sold legally in many locations, even Dubuque. My solution is to have distribution State controlled, with the handicapped handling the merchandise to the greatest extent possible. That it cost ten dollars for ten joints, and that there be some form of rationing similar for that used for strategic products in wartime. I wasted away my youth reading, and offer it as an alternative, while pointing out that down time is down time, and in excess breeds its own very obvious results.

Her name is Kayla. She personifies the pedophiles dream, tall, sleek, and as flat chested as a boy, and wearing a training bra. Her eyes and especially her nose are East Indian, very dramatic, and she has an exaggerated African lower lip that is worth the price of the ticket of and by itself. She seems very mild, attentive and friendly. Let me give you an example of attentive'. One burner on my stove puts out too much heat to cook tortillas. When I showed her this, she actually bent over and looked, asking me to adjust the flame twice. The same scenario with Samantha or Queenie would result in a yeah-yeah' from the bedroom, where the stereo is. Nice to know there's one girl here who actually might not burn down the place. As mentioned, Dangriga is a thin crescent on the verge of a trackless wilderness, so the local idea of a vixen might be as mild tempered and graceful as the prototypical girl-next-door, what with jaguars to set the standard. She and Samantha seem made for each other, so, chances are, I'll retire happily to my fantasy world, hands to myself, watch the sacred word-count soar (as I said, hands to myself), and try, from time to time, to remember I'm in the second act of my seventh freaking novel.

Given a choice, would I treat them all as daughters; never an impure thought? Get real, but the answer is pretty mild thoughts, and thoughts, only. But there is no chance. In the first place, I'm due for somebody, and, while I'm not legally a king needing an heir for his throne, there is that nagging million plus Belize dollars which have to go to somebody. In the second place, this is no playground for young girls. The aids rate is high and getting higher, plus the whole list of other STDs. Alternative relationships may be illegal and immoral, but traditional ones are outright deadly. I am for starting a restricted sex club as a practical scheme simply because the religious approach tends to be easily-forgotten theory, and is only applicable to a small percentage of especially devoted, which always means wealthy, families. Yes, a strict church-girl upbringing provides a good chance of physical and moral purity until marriage. Yes, vast numbers of girls do not get a church-girl upbringing. Yes, yes, yes, the second act.

"Tina, sweetie," Gregg whispered as he undid the clasp on the little black dress, "Gracie's on top of the blanket, and she didn't wear her top."

"That's the third time, darling," the girl replied, her voice low and husky as she fell into her improv, "so I don't think you have to torment yourself in regards to your daughter's feelings about you."

"I shouldn't be having the feelings I do, darling," the adult whispered as he took town the child's auburn tresses, "I love you so much I'd never want anything to even be a hiccup in what we have with each other."

"I love you, too," Tina said, "but remember, I was a nine year old with a cute dad, too, and I thought he was the living end, and the day I noticed I was starting to develop, the first thing of all was I wanted to show him. And, guess what, you happened to be a drop-dead dad. I'd worry about her if she wasn't attracted to you, and if you weren't attracted by her, I'd start asking for recommendations of mental health experts."

"I keep thinking, `How can you be just a wife,'" Gregg whispered, "you're so much more. Ward Cleaver or Mike Brady wouldn't know what to do with you."

"Well," the girl responded, "Al Bundy would keep me in shoes, and Tim Allen would keep my toaster working, so there are useful references, too."

"Still," the man said, his voice again serious, " do you think your daughter is old enough to be flirting as much as she does?"

"Yes, darling," the girl said, "and, since the subjects has reared its beautiful head, I'm going to tell you that when I was nine I did more than flirt with my dad; more than just show him my little pansy-size nipples. If Gracie has the same feelings as I, and I'm sure she not only has them, but has had them for the last few months, and will continue to have them well into the future, I want her to have the same extreme and rare privilege I had, and that was learning with a man I both respected and adored. If you think you can buy your daughter, and Pammy, when she's a couple of years older, one stitch more, for any amount of money, then you have a world of shopping ahead of you."

"Oh, darling," the young man whispered as he leaned over her slim body, pulling down the zipper on her dress, kissing her shoulder the instant they were naked. "Was he gentle with you?"

"Beautifully gentle," Tina replied, standing slowly, so her husband could undo her training bra, "just as you'll be with your Gracie."

"Oh, baby," the man whispered into her neck, her dress falling to the floor.

"Let me tell you, darling," the girl whispered over her right shoulder as the man's gentle hands found her tender, white belly, "I don't want it to be any kind of secret and I only waited because I wanted to be sure of Gracie."

"If you want to keep it private, that's okay," Gregg whispered, "as long as you're with me, the past means nothing."

"I don't," Tina said, "just the opposite. I want to share every moment with you, one-third for you, and another third so I can relive what happened that first time in your hands and on your bed, and the final third, so you can teach Gracie the same way Daddy taught me, and Pammy as soon as she's interested."

"I'm very lucky you picked me at the dance tonight," Gregg whispered.

"I'm very lucky to have such a father," the girl whispered back, "Daddy."

"Oh, angel," he murmured, "teach me."

"Yes, love," the ten year old responded. "We were playing marbles. It was a rainy day, and I invited him up to the attic to play on the carpet, with a circle, instead of a pot."

"What were you wearing, darling?" the new father asked.

"A sweat shirt and jeans," the girl said, turning to unbutton the silk robe of the male standing close behind her, "I didn't want him to get suspicious. Naturally, it was a little hot in the attic, so that gave me a chance to take them off without spooking him. But that was after we'd been playing for awhile."

Now, they weren't there to play childish games, "Play Pen" though it might have been called. Management was serious in providing alternative vectors for long-term loving relationships, with a healthy dash of wanton carnality thrown in on the theory that, whether he saw it or not, the knowledge that a father's daughter or a brother's kid sister bucking frantically in the strong arms of an athletic young male, and the girl's returning flushed, throbbing and soaking wet to her alpha male, was an aphrodisiac of lasting quality that could not help but make a good relationship significantly better, so, no, marbles were not provided. There was however, tinfoil, and, improvising, Gregg and Tina were able to enact a simulated game of marbles with balls of the foil. It was perhaps a bit like playing pool on a golf green, but the game, itself, was of secondary importance. Pretend.

Tina, in her tiny bra and panties rolled her ersatz marble toward a sheet of notepaper. Gregg, naked, his distended penis jutting almost seven inches down from his waist, took his turn.

"Show me how you hold it, Daddy," the girl said in a soft, husky voice after they'd played a few minutes. She sidled next to the tall athletic Japanese American male.

There may be different grips for golf clubs and tennis rackets, and if there aren't, billions are being wasted each year on false lore, but, in marbles, there is only one. The father should have been suspicious, but he was a good man, so he brought his daughter gently beneath him so as to take her right hand in his own.

"Daddy, isn't it hot up here?" the girl asked.

"Yes, darling, it is a little," Gregg role-played.

"Daddy?" the girl said, her voice now very soft.

"Yes, sweetheart?" the man said to the girl underneath his powerful chest.

"Would you just die of embarrassment if I took off my sweatshirt?"

"Are you wearing a blouse?" Gregg asked.

"No, Daddy," Tina said, her voice now a whisper as she and her first lover played their game at the foot of the bed, their witnesses positioned for a good view, "but Mom bought me a bra yesterday, so I won't be bare chested."

"You're growing up," the young man temporized, kissing the head under his chin.

"Daddy," the girl responded, "we had a long talk, and she said I could show it to you if I wanted to, and I do, Daddy, besides, it's hot up here, and I like playing with you, and I don't want to go back downstairs. Mom's visiting Granddad, so this is our chance to really be alone together. Please."

"It's not to happen," the man whispered.

"Daddy's aren't meant to molest their girls," the girl acknowledged, "but I want you to look at me. Look the word up in the dictionary, but not now, it means bother, annoy, interfere with, or disturb. It also means attack, and who, I would ask you, Daddy, is attacking who?" She didn't bite him hard, but she did bite him, growling softly.

"Your mom really said that?" Gregg asked, nicely catching a tone half way bemusement and wonder.

"She knows how I feel about you," the girl replied, "and she thinks it's dead cute. `A great way to keep you very happy and very at home,' to quote her."

"Darling, I would love to see you," the male rasped, letting the child from under him so she could mime pulling a heavy shirt over her head and kneel in from of him, as he knelt close in from of her.

"Take yours off, too, Daddy, so I won't be embarrassed," the girl said. Gregg copied her charade. "Oh, Daddy," she whispered, "you're beautiful."

"Baby," the man whispered softly, as her hands found his, guiding him to her face, then down her slim neck, finally leaving him (calling off the attack) to find his face, his neck, and his powerful shoulders.

"Daddy," the girl said softly, "take me to my bed."

"I love you very much, my darling daughter," the man said, rising, picking up the seventy pound child, and lying her on the nearby bed as her father and the other males moved to their original positions, but now kneeling adjacent the low Asian sleeping mat. Tina laced her fingers behind her neck and arched in display, her long, slim legs demurely together. Gregg knelt at her right side, looking down into her huge brown eyes.

"It won't interfere with Mom," the girl whispered to her stag, "that's the biggest danger of incest. A daughter coming between husband wife with her youth. Corrupting the marriage with secrecy, manipulation, and a private agenda."

"Will you share out bed?" the man asked.

"Yes, Daddy," the child said, "and here is a secret, she wants another baby as soon as possible, so I get to hold you both while it's happening. Pretty sexy, eh?"

"Incomprehensible," Gregg whispered in agreement, adding: "but what about you angel. I can see your nipples bulging against your bra, and last I knew I was a very potent male."

"Mom's wild about the idea of the two of us being pregnant together," the ten year old answered, "but she says it's probably just a fantasy. The biggest secret of all is that I'm Granddad's baby, his child, so your gift of family love will be my child as soon as I'm mature enough to give her to you, safely, probably when I'm twelve years old, if we go to a special clinic in Switzerland."

"I still have every feeling of incest with you," Gregg said, "you are as much more a daughter as you were more a wife."

"And I know your seed will be rich with taboo and sin, Daddy," Tina said, "that a filthy wickedness will be mine when you whisper to me what you whisper to Mom."

"I will tell you," Gregg promised, finally leaning to molest the child at his knees. He started at her heaving flanks, both his gentle hands covering the soft whiteness of her belly, then moving down to the band of her tiny pink panties and pulling them down slightly in front. "Oh, love," he whispered, finding a silky trace of blond hair, "you're more mature than I thought."

"Daddy," the girl responded, her voice tender and soft, "if it happens, the Group will give me RU-486, but we'll be able to share it for a month. They're very practical about such things, feeling, on a one-time basis, the sacrifice of a salamander is an acceptable price to pay for a very special few weeks between a father and his growing girl."

Gregg's gentle fondling moved from the girl's belly to her slim chest. His fingers slipped beneath her training bra as he stared into her eyes. "That feels beautiful," the child whispered up at him.

"It feels nice to me, too," the young man said, "but, honestly, darling, I think I could mount your brown eyes on toothpicks and love you just as much as I do now."

"Maybe tomorrow," the honey smiled, moving her tiny hands to her delicate chest and pulling up the wispy silk covering her rose-bud breasts. Gregg bent and found her with his mouth, her hands running through his athlete's trim, pulling him gently to her. He kissed and sucked for a long time, then his lips traveled at her bidding to her young mouth and she murmured welcome. "Gracie's old enough for this," she whispered, "just as I was with Dad."

"Yes, darling," he said, somehow keeping up with the shift in stories, generations, motifs, relationships, preferences, attitudes, and secret hopes and forbidden desires.

"Take everything off," she said, lifting her hips. The man's right hand left her tender young right nipple and slid slowly to her arching loins. He peeled her pink silk over her knees, and, as she gently kicked them free, he removed her bra. The instant her panties were clear, Tina spread her legs wide. Gregg straddled her right leg, coming to rest on his knees between her ten-year-old thighs. He dropped over her on his muscular forearms, and the girl brought her knees high on his now heaving and sweating flanks, her arms also encircling the powerful body poised above her own juvenile frame. Harry knelt at the couple's waist, and guided the man to his daughter. When the female felt it was right she whispered, "Yes," to Gregg, and, still in Harry's hand, he began thrusting against her wetness and her yielding softness.

"I like your hand on me," Gregg whispered to Harry. Bisexuality was assumed, much like sanity, as a Play Pen imperative, but it was nice to be welcomed. Harry half mounted Gregg, continuing to guide the young adult as he thrust gently between their coupling bodies. Tina gazed up at her father in wonder, and her right hand gripped his sweating shoulder. "Oh, Dad," she whispered, "you're really letting him get inside me."

"Are you okay?" he rasped in response. She nodded, smiling shyly, her hand squeezing his shoulder in reassurance. The father released her daughter's handsome young partner, and rose partially on his knees. Gregg sensed Harry's rapidly increasing tension and rose high on his arms. "He's going to cum on you," he said to the little girl. Forest held the girl's head so she was comfortable looking down between her body and Gregg's. Her father's big circumcised penis was rigid and almost motionless, circumcised, and pulsing hotly. "Yes, Daddy," the girl whispered, to grunts from both the males. "Daddy," she said, "Gregg's cuming inside me. Show me." "Yes, baby," he whispered and in moments he was beginning to wet her. "It's getting harder," she panted. "Yes, darling," the father said, his own ejaculation quickly becoming hard, fast, and uncontrollable. Forest and the sailors joined the couple, masturbating and ejaculating heavily over the child's bare chest and pretty face. As Gregg began shaking uncontrollably on his rigid arms, the Australians helped him gently from the girl, and Forest let the girl's head lie back on her pillow, and helped the panting, sweating Harry between his daughter's slick thighs. He fisted his friend into her, sensing when the father was against his daughter's hymen. "Yes, Daddy," the girl hissed, lurching to him, the sailor's holding her widely spread legs. "Oh, love," the man whispered as he penetrated with a single stabbing thrust. Her eyes filled with tears which he immediately licked away.

For a minute they remained tense and unmoving at the waist. Harry lowered himself fully on the child, wanting to look into her beautiful eyes, but unable to resist the sensation of her slick young chest and her swollen nipples against his own heaving, athletic chest. He kissed her, then rose again, because the child was avid in her gaze. Forest again raised her head, and the father proceeded to take his daughter with gentle, deliberate strokes, quickly mounting to his hilt, than setting a strong, fast rhythm and her slender arms gripped his flanks and her fingers raked his back. The sailors freed her long, slim legs and they circled his plunging thighs, pulling him as she, helped by her bedmates, lunged and bucked hard and fast in response. "Oh, yes," the girl moaned, as she truly lost her virginity and responded to what was happening inside her, happily letting the long wave curl slowly to the shelving beach, then hover in loving delight until it crashed, sending her into a full, howling seizure as her head lolled and her body turned to stone, then to jelly. Harry froze, fully mounted, welcoming his child back with gentle kisses, then, as she eased herself tentatively to her, found her exactly the young and avid athlete he'd brought her up to be, and again mastered her for ten minutes before a second stuttering wave of climaxes engulfed her, leaving her limp and ragged beneath him with barely energy to coo happily as he began cumming in her.

Gregg invited Forest and the Australians to stay, and Harry nodded gratefully as he gathered his wet, naked child, and, slick with sperm, himself, carried her across the softly lit courtyard to their bungalow, where he made love to her through the long night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kayla night and Kayla day. Vixen of the dark to school girl of the light. Very nice, very sweet; hair done nicely, sans the red dress and training bra. A cute pet, but, alas, gone already as she was just here for the one night. I quizzed Queenie about her, wondering why the big reputation, and she said the girl liked to play too much. I can hear a sigh of about the density of a tornado from ten or twenty million American homes beset with surly, rebellious malcontents. What would a daughter that's too playful bring on the open market, to the nearest million? She'll be welcomed any time, on any basis; good kid. In the meantime, Queenie's cleaned up the kitchen twice in a row, which is, in the words of Pat Norton, on Tech TV, scary. Samantha spent two hours in bed with me, trying to convince me to go to the bank today, instead of waiting until mid-morning tomorrow, when my funds should be credit to my account. Very sweet, very, very funny, and living proof that cute is something you don't try to be. She was refused, although there one chance in four the money is there as it's sometimes sent on the fourteenth if the fifteenth falls on the weekend. It's nice to have something to talk about, and I believe you get maximum flavor from a chicken if you wait a month for it. Anyway, that was the major subject of conversation, which will give you some idea of life in poverty gulch. Chicken is a big deal. So I'm told, you can get a girl for half a bird. Elston and Tonton know every place in town that sells, them, where they come from, how they are packaged, who has fresh and frozen, and what they cost (about one-seventy-five, U.S., a pound). Big smiles at just the mention of the C-word. I think I'll try chicken a la king. It was, next to chow mein, the dread of the cafeteria menu for some fifteen years of my life, but, made with cream sauce, instead of institutional who-know-what and corn starch, it might pass. We aced out the month with plenty of everything except powdered creamer for the tea, so score a good grade on fuel management, the pilot's number one absolute responsibility. (Can't have too much or you'll bend the pipes that hold the wheels when you land.)

Being a legend in one's own mind brings up the specter of cult status. While this is something I'd rather avoid, seeing what Edgar Cayce did to my cousin Alec, it's not up for the god to determine how he is revered. In case it does happen, I have a couple of trivia items for the deepest of the most deeply imbued, moronic sods. A question could go: How does the unearthly one use his telephone. There are two answers, seeing as how I'm still offline in the hardwired sense. I use the base of the phone to prop the door of my bedroom/studio open just wide enough for the cats, but still closed to give me some privacy when the kids come up to make breakfast (if I've been working all night and am sleeping) It's perfect size and easy to pick up. I use the handset to throw at the cats when they start scratching the linoleum under my bed, something that can go on for ten minutes as their infinitesimal brains try to cope with modern living. The cord allows me to retrieve the missile for a second shot. It worked so well that now I just have to growl and they scat. That's how I use my telephone.

Kidding, if I was, aside, one of the rare privileges of living in an untrammeled society is being able to keep as many as eleven house lions. The vet bills, alone, in the States would run to the thousands of dollars, and here there are no vets. Add kitty litter and I could literally support a family on the cost of a few pets. Here the whole gang, now, I think, for one never knows for sure with an open-door policy, seven animals costs about two dollars a day, and yes, I tried using the copious supplies of natural sand around my house, but it just added to the mess, and my present system, while yielding of its highly unpleasant couple of minutes each day with spatula, cold, brown oatmeal, and plastic dish, is absolutely free, as well as inspiring spot-on housekeeping. In spite of their remarkable stupidity in some areas, the animals have picked the easiest and most convenient possible waste area, and if they hadn't, if they just went willy-nilly anywhere, anytime, they'd be living outside. They make mistakes but are over ninety-nine percent consistent. Good kitty kitties. I never think of less than an art collection. They have exquisitely beautiful faces, I don't know what could exceed them. They are, in the main, very affectionate with each other, and marvelously gentle at throwing a five day old kitten a foot in the air. My big tiger, a perfect and huge tom, seems to have gone for good. He was missing for first a day, then, awhile later, for two days, and awhile later three days, and it's now been a week. Superb animal, probably seven or eight pounds, perfect health, and he ever came back with any kind of scars. I have another very big, coal black tom, his brother, but they rarely fought, and the tiger was by far the heavier of the two. Probably seduced by cooking chicken -- I better watch out or Samantha will be next -- or sardines.

Money again. What does it look like? How does it feel? It's been two weeks or something like that. From here on, famous last words, it should be a cake walk. Everything is paid for except five dollars weed and a few dollars for cigarettes, and the carrying expenses fall well within my thousand- plus dollar income. Of course, there will be all those chickens, but even so things like furnishing and fixing up should begin to proceed. I'm half appalled I don't want to be back on the cable. I miss, very much, Chief Inspector Morse on our BBC outlet, as well as "Law and Order" and "NYPD Blue". There were never enough Bundies or Golden Girls, but I loved what there were. The documentary channels kept me engaged for eight years, and were of enormous review value, as well as delineating the real Churchill, among others, but there does come a point when the diminishing returns turn them into time wasters. I miss Peter Jennings, my archetype person in the American media. (Jackie Chan, as old readers know, is my ultimate person, period.) I miss "Vacation", but am thrilled at its monumental status, though often rudely cut by Hebrews, as a classic. That's a pretty pitiful handful off a baseline of sixty channels times eighteen hours a day (sound often off but closed-captioning always on) times eight years. Most of it, way, way over ninety eight percent, is penny-dreadful. I'll admit things improved dramatically with the demise of the nauseating black psychic, but Everest is a big pile of rubble, and most of it seems to survive. WGN for example. I was captive of it in Mexico, with only eight channels ('82 -- '87) but probably did not watch a single connected hour in the whole time I had cable here. Most others were equal wastes, and it's possible the "Odyssey" channel was actually worse. The very worst, even exceeding the Oprah wanna-bes in pure loathsomeness, was all children's programming, save "Pappyland" with Mike Caliglio (sp) as Pappy Drewit, which gets a solid B-plus. If you want total and absolute as adjectives for national shame, children's television, produced very largely by those of Jewish background, is the place to stick them. And it could do so much; teach energetically and vividly, instead of one variation of squalling puppet after another in a manic kaleidoscope that is toxic. Do you hear me? Toxic. It is a giant step toward the end of times and its perpetrators should be dropped by parachute in Newfoundland.

I should bestir myself and look up and read the article on the New Novel. I do wonder if I started it. The new novel is plot light, because after September Eleventh, plots become silly. It is free ranging, like "Independence Day", but has included perhaps a quarter non-fiction material, including autobiography. It is character intense and superbly crafted. It is easy to write and made available either free on the net or at low cost. It is uncensored, giving the abused or misused equal opportunity to respond with their own work. It takes over from television in five to ten years, providing, per hour, approximately ten times the former medium's input. I don't claim to have invented it, feeling it a predictable next step, but will take credit for stabilizing it, much as great composers of the classic era stabilized the symphony and concerto. This is how you do it, and be generous, leave it to your grandchildren to try the next step.

Writers may shake their heads. "So you say," they intone, meaning I'm being a bit glib by calling it easy to write. It is. No clever twists and turns. That should add years to the life of the brain, by itself. No heavy research. That can bog a novelist down for years and bankrupt him. No advisors, editors, consultants, or help of any kind. All these make it easy. The computer is as much an improvement over the typewriter as quill and paper were over chisel and granite. The major Web archives are priceless sources of sample material, largely unedited and of all qualities. The writer should understand that you may learn as much from bad examples as good ones, especially in respect to the fine balance of overstatement and understatement essential to perfect work. So yes, relatively easy, though remaining by far the most difficult of art forms. (In my life I've known a number of people who could draw, photograph, and sculpt very nicely, but never one who could write a short story, or a single chapter of a compelling work. In the U.S. today, there are probably no more than twenty or thirty good novelists, and, save myself, nothing approaching a great one. Now who wants to play? But, again, watch out for that overstatement. Most of the stories on the archives are nicely turned out and eminently readable. Cartoons have their distinct place in the scheme of things, and the saner half of the population would rather look at the journeyman's art than Picasso's.)

Did I just trash myself? I've had my share of lucky breaks on this manuscript, so perhaps it's time I stuck my foot in it. After all, somebody's got call me on something, or I'll stop just thinking I'm a god and go wafting off on the breeze. If Samantha gets wind of it, count yourself out ten percent, as being on the receiving end of your tithes, donations, contributions and gifts would suit her to a tee. Look at it this way: what price can you put on teaching a girl to add?

The Seventeenth has just arrived. Supporting eight or ten people on twenty five grand a year, with monthly allotments, means Christmas twelve times a year. Last month I got the pressure cooker and a skirt and blouse for Samantha, a few other odds and ends, with school expenses leaving nothing after the basics and food. I had vague thoughts of replacing the camera, but Samantha has been so good and low key I'll wait until April, and treat her to something in the meantime. In the same meantime, it's come time to go through the taxing ritual of converting everything to Plain Text files, keeping chapters and files in order, and attaching them to e-mails, then hanging out at Malcolm's for an hour to upload about one point three meg of text, or 224,000 words, even for me, a big session.

TEMP. FILE END 12/17/02

It's Christmas bonus time. Clicked to log on at Malcolm's, no modem. Seven days in the shop, with all kinds of registry problems, and finally a reinstall of ME, bringing us to Christmas Eve. Now I'm meant to upload on Boxing Day, Dec. 26, but after the rent is paid, I'll have a dollar until the bank opens on Friday, so no cab fare, putting the probable date at the twenty-seventh.

I spent my impromptu and ad hoc Christmas vacation cooking, nagging the place into shape, and reading Shell Scott books by Richard S. Prather, trying not to be jealous of him for his excellent editor, while hoping to goodness he had one. He is a wonderful writer, probably more deserving of John D. MacDonald's place in the relatively recent literary spotlight than Mr. MacDonald does (with his early paperback originals, and the Travis McGee series, not so much "Condominium", with its inevitable hurricane. So, we carry on, bonus-wise, and I think it might be neat to be published a few days after the main holiday, when folks are getting a little bored with the whole thing and looking to the Web as that which bores thee the least of all.

Addictions. Tea. I finally scored some Lipton decaf, but it's delicious and head-and-shoulders above Red Rose and all the others. I'm up to six cups a day, and catch myself making a cup while the kettle's still warm from the last. Since every mug contains two heaping tablespoons (or whatever they are) of sugar, and one of creamer, this is not on my diet, but I've still lost a few more pounds and pretty close to the final excess inch. Samantha now says I need for fat, but the stuff is tricky and hard to lose, so she'll have to take me as god made me.

Kayla was back for a day. She freaked out over my no-toilet-paper regimen. Cute, but I reminded her that hospital workers toil up to their elbows in worse than my (usually) white sock with handy sink for washing.

The computer is terrific after its time in the shop. The case is rusting, so someday I'm going to have to replace it, but for the moment it's sizzling, except the mouse won't scroll in the down direction. The world's smallest problem.

How have the muses done over the layoff? I don't know, having never given them a contiguous week of liberty, whether they'll return avid and ready to boogie, or lethargic and rebellious at the merciless demands made on their mystical noggins.

Another bootleg product, this time "Encarta". I thought it needed a CD, but it seems to have plenty of stuff on the hard drive. The articles are kind of funny, showing the slavishness of even a giant like Microsoft to political correctness. They read like press releases from the land of milk and honey, but it's useful for spelling and an overview. I think the graphics are overabundant, but I'm a writer and any picture costs me a thousand words. The maps, on the other hand, are quite pretty, and one can even zoom in for marginally useful detail. I don't know how much it costs, in other words, how much I've stolen, this time, though, to be fair to myself, it appeared on my screen unbeknownst to me, maybe a Christmas gift from the shop, or, dare I think it, payment for reading so far in ye olde novelle If this is true, and I'd be frightfully too embarrassed to ask, why, I've made my first fiction sale, setting off one of those neat little traps in life, because I've always promised myself I wouldn't write porn for money.

No redeeming artistic, literary, or social qualities. On the other hand, if these characteristics are laid on with a trowel, are they `redeeming', in the first place? If so, where does that leave the salacious material? Since I've just mentioned political correctness I might observe that this is my execution of the concept, for, instead of going in amongst Dancer and Prancer and Comet and Vixen with a leather whip in a leather glove, I stir them into action with pseudo-literary mumbo-jumbo. This has the instant effect of getting them into their various harnesses and pulling the sleigh, largely, I'm sad to say, acting out a desire not to coast along in the vehicle. (They probably would rather be whipped than ride along with me, but I've never asked.)

If you're standing upright, your head doesn't have enough in it to be a novelist. I've copped to a dozen deviations necessitated my chosen craft, but perhaps bad posture is a stretch. I also rationalize a lot, and that fits, as well, the fly in the ointment being that I am a great artist, but if it's not pure rationalization, there should be at least some in the mix, otherwise, I'll end up in a wheelchair licking lollipops held between my knees.

Christmas dinner tomorrow with Alex, my landlord, and "three teetotaling retired missionaries." It's a bit of a shock to realize I haven't spoken to three white people in the last eight years. If that doesn't convince you the Net is the biggest circus to hit any burg, anywhere, ever, than nothing will. But it's true. Malcolm, Alex and Donna are the only three Americans or Europeans I've spoken with since moving here, eight years ago. Now, three at one time as if I'd suddenly arrived at a clearing in the heart of Africa. Dennis Franz is entirely right in "The People's Guide to Mexico" when he points out that the worst culture shock of any trip is returning to the crazy excess and waste of the U.S.A. Four whites, and I'll make five. Who knew so many had survived? How much can I tell about Samantha, about my career? Will they have heard of Nifty? As a conservative, I'm against all forms of pensions and benefits beyond the almighty paycheck, and these are all four, pensioners. My initial problem is whether or not to tease Alex about not inviting Samantha. I wonder if even Emily Post or Helen Gurley Brown yield up anything for the clueless when it comes to dealing with a couple two generations apart from each other. If tracking down bogus CDs would make an opera, maybe this can be the foundation of a new forum of etiquette I can think of an entry for the first page. It works this way, for every inch your waist is over thirty-two inches, add ten years to the age of the girl it's acceptable to be seen with. This leaves open the question of where the measurement against age should start, but perhaps I can provide guidance. My waist is thirty-three inches, and Samantha just turned fifteen. If that doesn't leave you speaking with forkless tongue I'll have to dig under the seat for that leather glove.

Now you get to catch your real holiday gift, for lo it came to pass that on the very eve of the return of Sloggo, the dauntless transistor set, clappeth was I and verily rent asunder by ye olde flu, wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Though I spent '95 and '96 in bed with acute phlebitis, had one attack of shingles and three serious (to me) bout of heartburn, I haven't lost an hour or spent a dollar on medicine in about five years. Then, Christmas Eve, an almighty cough, and malaise of the overcooked-noodle variety. Everything but sleep. What happens next is it is Christmas and Alex is pulling up in front of the house in his museum quality old Ford pickup truck with colossal eight cylinder engine. We adjourn to his digs at Southern Foreshore, where dinner and his retired missionary guests await. There are probably no more than a dozen steps leading up to his front verandah, but they look like a hundred and a dozen. That's the flu, in case anyone out there hasn't had the pleasure. Make it. Sit on the far side of the table, against the wall, hoping no on will ask me to move anywhere, for anything. Belizeans do holiday dinners as poorly as everything else, so there are excess mountains of lukewarm ham and turkey, huge containers of lukewarm salad, piles of lukewarm rolls, and two huge cakes, that didn't have to be any particular temperature to be crummy. Only the cranberry sauce, lukewarm, was edible. My hopes of being left alone were quickly dashed as I was summoned to duty at the big dead bird and equipped a dull knife and an incredibly flimsy serving fork. "Gee-whiz, It's Christmas," murmured me to myself as I began sawing and stabbing. Now let me set the perspective here; I am no fan of my late mother, her toxins poisoned her to death thirty-four years younger than her mother died, but, in spite of being an abysmally lazy and robotic cook throughout the year, she did Thanksgiving to a masterful tee. Everything piping hot or ice cold, and stuffing -- twice a year, count the fingers -- that I could have eaten as an exclusive diet for twenty years, any day of the week. One turkey (ham at Easter, Salmon on The Fourth), carved fifteen-minutes out of the oven. No garlic or spices, lot of cream and butter, everything infuriating because if she could do this, why didn't she, at least once a month or so? Both my grandmothers put on equally wonderful meals, or, at least, their wonderful cooks did. So, yes, snobbery rears its ugly head, though I don't ever recall an ice swan, a status symbol amongst the class conscious. Limp fork and two-dollar knife, wielded with the last calories of your extraordinary hero, prevail over over-cooked, cold, tough, bird, and a plate of road-kill evolves. I remain on my feet, instead of crashing to the floor, in anticipation of the retired missionaries, whom I assume to be Presbyterians, and who are expected any moment. I reclaim my chair against the wall, hoping I look sick enough not to be asked to do anything, and make stabs at scattering food around my plate, feeling thankful for the flu which gives me a great excuse not to eat anything. Even the wonderful-looking potato salad is dull and warm, and the stuffing is nothing but over-spiced breadcrumbs.

Now the cry goes forth that our retired missionaries are in sight (poor sods), and I breath a sigh of relief which damn near turns out to be my last oxygenated earthly experience, for the retired missionaries are Elder Frick and Elder Frack, age twenty, just finishing (i.e., retiring from) their two-year proselytizing `call' for The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. And I still have ninety percent of my food on my plate, having only eaten the skin of the turkey and most of the cranberry sauce. You would hardly think such a scene could go almost immediately from bad to worse, but never underestimate the flu. Turns out they're both from The California Republic. There are crummy Mormons galore, but the true embodiment of arrogance and fathomless ignorance is undoubtedly the California Mormon.

They wouldn't drink the iced tea because of the caffeine, how ignorant and arrogant is that? They were witless parrots on and on with their Elder this and Elder that, calling Alex's wife Sister perhaps fifty times in the half hour they graced our humble home with the presence of their being. By an act of mercy I would interpret as divine, other humble lodgings sought their `ness', and Absolute Frick and Ultimate Frack, with a dozen final Sisters, each, let it be noted, slowly but actually departed. Ninety percent of the food was still there when Sister Leslie pulled off a real miracle, offering me a heavily laced eggnog, which was my first alcohol in two years. Blessed Sister.

Alex is in his seventies, from far northwestern Canada. We were finally able to get on to railroads, hydro projects, wilderness mining ventures, and the long list of things that make our usual twice a month visits a pleasure, at least to me. We do grate a little because he has , a, the Scotts view of the English, and, b, the Candadian's view of America (as Imperialist -- imperialist ). I find this bothersome, due to its stereotypical nature, in a man who is University educated, well-read, and who spent twenty years with the Y, then had a second long career with Canadian diplomatic corps. You have to read a lot when you're young so what you're born with doesn't weight you down. Of course, this isn't particularly applicable to Alex, as he's retired on good pensions (he owns four nice houses in town), but the principle is widely applicable, and can be devastating, if, for example, you bring up your belief in Creationism at dinner with a new client. In any event we get along pretty well, and I was able to keep myself at least partially in check vis-à-vis the ludicrous Mormons, only allowing as how it would take five hundred of Smith's salamander tribe to equal a single Mennonite. With this he agreed, though I have a nagging feeling his wife is a fellow traveler (I mean so many Sister, so fast must portend some otherworldly), so I hope I don't get evicted for big mouth disease -- it happened once before (at "Friendly Jungle"), which is the reason I'm an artist rather than a big economic turkey.

Of course, all this happened while I had the flu, and, to be sure I had a full life-stress-testing event, the massive V-8 in the totally Belizean Ford refused not only to start, but even to click with promise. That knocked off a few years, and in an instant or two, I was sixteen, once again grappling with balky hood release, balkier safety catch, pliers, rusty pliers, and sluggish terminal clamps. Jiggling didn't help, so it was the whole treatment, with, luckily, a file so when the clamps finally came off the posts, I was able to get bright metal all around in a couple of minutes. All four times a sensible-sized engine then started with a quick twist of the key, and we were homeward bound over the fiendishly uncomfortable byways of the PUP's Dangriga. (I'm all for rough back streets to keep vehicle speeds down, but, somewhere, god, there must be a limit. In fact, this is how I now pick a cab in town. I sit on the steps of the shop across from the Starlight restaurant, and listen. How much reverberation and heavy grinding is there coming from the front end of an approaching vehicle? Given the state of the roads, does such-and-such a vehicle sound as if it could make it the mile and change to my house? Two or three typically go by, then I yell Taxi, and am on my way, occasionally in a tight, late-model Mitsubishi, or the like.

By three, I was home, and not only still alive, but able to go a second, and ten a third night, slightly feverish and restless, without a minute's sleep. Seventy two hours, plus, no sleep, whatever, and the strange thing was, I felt pretty darn good, the whole time. If I'd had to work at an ordinary job, I would have not only been able to do so, but I would have been able to drive, for example, three days, nonstop. (clear across the country). Other benefits. Remember that inch that made thirty-three? Gone. One bowl of Won Ton soup in the same time period. Smoking and drinking? A three-day hiatus on each could get a wanna-be quitter over the initial hump. And the recovery. Slept maybe six hour last night, and even though Mormons are nothing to write about, the keyboard's clicking as ever, and I'd half-bet on a ten-thousand-word day. Bouncing back quickly, like wounds which heel quickly, is a sign of overall fitness. If they could ever harness a mild flue in a reliable injection, it would have significant medical possibilities for dieting, remaining awake (if not exactly at the top of your form, I managed to forget my pin number of five years, and am even now constantly hitting the Windows key instead of the right shift key, something I rarely do under normal circumstances, but these notwithstanding, alert enough to function in non-critical areas), or addiction withdrawal. Fevered thinking becomes pinpoint obsessional, with your mind constantly trying to order minutia, like soldiers behind a dummy, but, given time, might yield something besides itself. There is a great passage in "Tom Cringle's Log" in which Michael Scott has Tom recovering from a nearly fatal bout of tropic fever, and, well healed, commenting that the agony of the disease was a fair price to pay for the pleasure of recovery. I remember for almost three years envying anyone I saw on television who could walk, to say nothing of run, and now I can click off a mile or so at least at a half-normal pace and haul a fifty-pound sack of rice up my long, steep stairs at one go. Of all my medical woes, heartburn was far and away the worst, and I haven't had a twinge in five years. This may be because I raised the head of my bed six inches above the foot, as the medical encyclopedia suggested, or some other factors. I had it, heartburn, once in the early eighties, then four times in '95 and '96, and no trace since. Never knew why it came, or went, but just know that it's a ghastly malady, hardly the semi-joke of the taxi-driver, pastrami-on-rye commercial.

All of which is to say, your Christmas-bonus essay has been cut by three sick-days, or, say, 25,000 words, proving Santa, also, works in mysterious ways.

Stupendously bleak holiday weather, half a flu of and by itself. Windy, squally, gray, and rainy with temperatures in the too-low seventies. Three white squalls, yesterday, alone. No John Canoe. No Chikanari. Lots of soggy tourists on every block. Even thoughts of the islands, usually fairy dust and hot magic, send shivers down my spine. The Caribbean can be as cold and dismal a body of water as any, largely because few voyagers are equipped with heavy foul-weather gear, di rigor in northern latitudes

Malcolm told me about the big Powerball payoff, so if anyone is cynical enough envision America as a nation of fat people waiting in line and otherwise hogtying pretty much everything for a free pot of money, they, because the new winner was personable and charming, two-hundred-eighty million in free publicity, have seen nothing, yet. Malcolm sells some six or eight gambling devices, so he's admittedly not impartial, and, like all chatterboxes feathering their nests off the worst of all addictions, points to the tax aspect, smooth as a bishop rationalizing his Town Car. I think of it differently, in terms of the books and magazine subscriptions not purchased for the kids, but then, I would. It makes you, my distinctly not beloved homeland, appear as a comic send up of and overdrawn clown. All belly, no brains. And, of course, with big-tent correctness ruling every niche and outpost of official everything, what it shows, in the end, is the fallacy of your gods of past and present, all gods, everywhere, and the equally utter failure of anything to do with the lunatic doctrine of democracy. Might be a good time to cry, "Remember Haiti!" in honor of Philippe who proved the power of the disgruntled iconoclast class of society, based on the acts of Sam Adams and John Hancock. Haiti, you see, didn't happen to have oil and coal in any equivalent of Pennsylvania, so the brigands liberty and freedom became exactly what Haiti has been for over two hundred years, and remains, though, before 1789 it was, according to Michael Scott, probably the fairest of all places for all colors and all classes of all places on earth. Isn't there wonder in the torch of Liberty? Sometimes I wonder. What I'm sure is of is that you will be finding out in due time. And let me state my parameters here. For one thing, I absolutely recognize the fact that we may have no more idea of what the next twenty years will bring, than the citizen of 1900 knew of the paving, cars, electricity, elevators, steel, bridges, highways, and dams of 1920. With hindsight, it's easy to see the driving forces for the following Roaring Twenties, while, with the present situation, conditions are the opposite, and computers, a fifteen year dynamic of dizzying magnitude as a hundred million household bought machines valued and two to three thousand dollars each, are now close to profitless, though still attractive to consumers because of speed, features, and all that yummy bootleg software, so, in reality, we are at the end not only of a boom, but the very Industrial Revolution, itself, leaving one to wonder what will be the driving force between now and 2020. Every third man a Powerball agent, as every third man was a spy in East Germany and is in any self-respecting, counter-revolutionary-wary Communist country? As far as I can see, this, and the preparation and sale of dietary books are the only games left in town. It's a little wearing to know my macaroni and cheese with hot dogs diet might unravel the very fabric of the American future, thus killing every civilized human on the planet, but, to repeat the Eliot refrain: "Talent does what it can, genius does what it must."

I was going to read "Silas Marner" while the computer was in the shop, but couldn't make it through all Shell Scott books, and then I was too sick to read unless someone paid me, so it's still on the unread, at least recently, list.

The Prather books are special fun for an ex-bus driver who knows the city and county of Los Angeles like the back of his hand. I read Bronson, and I can almost call the rest of the stops. My first run was Hollywood, and my second, probably the most exotic run in the USA. Sunday morning from Downtown, out Sunset to PCH, and back, including the campus. Those were the part-time days when I got off at noon on Sunday, and didn't report back until Thursday afternoon -- thus the big bike year. Both the vocation and avocation were cornucopias of neat stories from huge skid marks, to a dead horse in the corral, that no one would ever read, unless, perchance, said stories were part and parcel of an excessively macho literary superstar's autobiography. Perchance, also, it's a rainy and bleaker than bleak, which I happen to like, day, and, also, that I prefer to wait until tomorrow to trot Sloggo once again to Malcolm, and dare the gods to deny me access a second time. All of this mindful that Jose and I have just heard Tina's story of Canada, and he is now panting lividly, hot in my arms while the pretty, brown-eyed ten year old is trying not to wriggle and buck because Jose is such an unintentional beauty and having him inside her is the best feeling of her life, each hour merely adding the her finding and re-finding herself as a one-day woman.

Now, you'd think that having reminded us that there is much more to come, I'd reset the fictional stage, though Jose and Tina are certainly real enough, and get hacking at those 780,000-odd remaining words. Here's a conundrum: oops, Sim just dropped by with and amazingly fat, fresh ounce of sticky sinsemilla bud, on which I'd squandered $7.50 in U.S. funds from our lean reserve until January third, and the puzzle slipped my mind. Well, it was probably some sarcastic slant on something, and, since I could have been the target as easily as the next fellow, we'll let it slide.

Big problem booting this morning, old tricks that apparently withstood the re-install. That means la machina al demon demonio will stay on all night, I hope, purring me to sleep.

"Dimensions of Laziness." I awoke challenging myself to come up with a sure-fire million hardcover title. That's what I came up with. I sit astride my Herculean literary/artistic steed because it puts my butt in contact with the saddle. My aunt and uncle had two toasters in their house, one manual, one automatic. One morning my uncle absently dropped the bread into the manual one, in a moment realized his mistake, and removed the bread, dropping into the automatic Toastmaster. I have my "Word" icon back (Queenie somehow disabled this task bar, and I've been without it for a couple of months), and I will spend several seconds with my needs-cleaning mouse putting the cursor over the little "W" rather than double-clicking the fat desktop icon. My career is predicated on an ability to spend a normal twenty-three out of twenty-four hours flat on my back, monitor at my right hip, keyboard at my waist. Any trace of energy or enterprising engagement with the ying and yang of life couldn't help costing me a thousand words a day, and even a trip to the bathroom costs a cool hundred. So, one dimension of laziness is extreme motivation. I knew from the age of two years that I wanted to do something in my life that I could do in bed. I could read in bed, and have to admit that was helpful in showing the way. The joke is, up until recently, it was so impractical to compose long drafts while bedridden, doing so would have been a burden. Trying to use a portable typewriter as I use my keyboard would be tedious and slow; better to sit (even if in bed). I could have used my Commodore 64 keyboard in bed, when I wrote "The Pirates", but have to admit to simply never thinking of it, and, if I had, I would have viewed it as a little hedonistic for an old combat stooge like myself. Fact is, if I hadn't been well and properly nailed by phlebitis, I'd probably be putting in six hours a day at chair and desk, to the present day, robbing us, get out the towels, of twelve hours a day of productive time. Because I touch type well, the interface between man and machine disappears to the extent it can, which, combined with physical comfort, to the maximum possible, makes ten-thousand-word days not only possible, but fairly common. If you are a writer, any shade or stripe, and take one piece of advice in your life, get your computer in bed with you, a desktop model, not a laptop, too heavy (or use a laptop with an aux. keyboard). Twelve free hours a day. I would caution that if you have to do something fast and accurate, in burst mode, so to speak, you would want to be at a chair and desk, but to blow your mind with twenty pages where you used to do six, try it my way. The muses love to be coddled. Coddle them.

If laziness has drawbacks, I'm not aware of them. I was at the reading and thinking stage when I was married, and my "inactivity" led me to discover my wife was playing both ends against the middle, a characteristic which led to infinite freedom to read and think, which hardly seemed lazy enough, so I started dithering at a little Royal portable, and that was just inactive enough to fill out the bill, though I have to admit I bought ribbons by the box and had demolished the little typewriter in six months. I went on to wear out the keyboard on the Commodore in two years, and also overused a Brother electronic typewriter to the point I could only use it for envelopes. Too lazy to do anything on earth but, a, maintain some semblance of housekeeping, b, have six or eight friends, c, read, d, think, e, travel, and, f, write.

Laziness at its most esoteric is the province of the artistic virtuoso who won't lift a finger to produce anything other than the very best humanly possible. If there is any psychic energy expended it is along the line of grabbing gods by the hair of their heads and hauling them off the hillside, so there is room for you to be more than human, conveniently able to do more than is humanly possible. Of course, a comfy work station helps here, too.

There is a certain inevitable literary beauty to an essay on laziness. It tells its tale by being short.

If there were a market beyond a few thousand sales for light fiscal comedy, I'd sketch the last six months of 2002. I kept body and soul, times ten, together, but by the skin of my teeth and am ending the year with fifty dollars to my name. My quandary, at the moment, is whether to risk a ten dollar taxi ride into Malcolm's, to upload these files, or wait until the Third, when I'll, a least for a few days, be able to buy my own cab. It's the holidays, so I may take a chance, though David might want to scrutinize the manuscript, making the point moot. Also, who knows with Malcolm. I'm likely to find him off his feed, and he enjoys displaying to the world precisely why it is the pommy Brits have been run off one turf after another, legacies of outstanding civil and industrial achievements, notwithstanding. Everyone should have such problems, as the Jews say. The nice thing about laziness and the single writer is that if I'm too slack to take a taxi and take a chance, why, I'll just lie here and keep typing. Win win.

Halitosis came up in conversation; probably one of the kids wanting mouthwash. Here's my viewpoint. In my life, I've known one person, Bob Fruguli, one-time police chief of Marshfield, Mass., who had bad breath. I drove a bus in South Central for over three years, and not only don't remember anyone ever having notably bad breath, but, with one outrageous exception, don't remember anyone smelling of anything particular. I peg the waste factor promoted by the Lever Brothers at over ninety percent. The hot water wasted on incessant bathing, alone, would completely finance a dozen small countries, with a medium-size one thrown in for good measure. I haven't bathed in any sense of the word is six years. I ask Samantha and other if I smell okay, and they always say yes. Of course, living in the tropics helps here, because perspiration is more or less chronics, so, just by toweling off, you prevent the gray buildup associated with the perennially unwashed.

The Richard S. Prather books are an interesting time capsule. Reading stories published in the early Fifties, I found only one idiosyncrasy that dated the work: when Shell "grinds the gears" of his Cadillac. That put me to wondering when the first automatics became available, somewhere right about then. I remember Gran had a lending car, a '53 Chevy with a two-speed Powerglide, universally known as a shush pump. On the same note, I love the old Perry Masons; the great dignity of the conservative era, plainly evident on every Los Angeles street, and replaced with graffiti, vandalism, and litter almost everywhere. Political correctness, if nothing else, is a vicious and inclusive eyesore. How many bus taggers would you have to cane, as they do in Singapore, to stop the few hundred ruining the civilized ambience of the megatropolis? My guess is two or three. On this subject I'm a bit schizoid, because the only neighborhoods that ever attracted me in L.A. were around the Watts Towers, where the Sanfords maintained their junkyard. I love Dangriga, because it's trashy to the point of art.

Looks like my used-car buddy, who inspired this story, in the first place, is down, out, and bust. I've been trying to run into him to thank him for setting my needle in the groove, entirely unintentional though I'm sure it was. The last time I saw him he was puffing a cigarette inside Kuylen's hardware store, then, a week or two later, this bastion of the community was closed and locked. I owe, also, thanks to Susie So, a Chinese little-miss-princess who nixed any involvement I might have had in the fishing show project at the extreme outset. Obviously a lot of losers involved, and one stupendous winner. The whole place is a micky-mouse carnival, but, on the bright side, Belize is more pet than parasite, and who'd want to live in a world without the original "Temptation Island"? The camel driver running the place kissing Weirdy Beardy's ass in Havana probably does help keep the States engaged to a greater extent than it might otherwise be, while reminding all thoughtful people of the comic-book nature of uneducated masses and their biggest-flag-wins mentality. Frick and Frack of the Mormon persuasion illustrate one side of the coin, and tolerance by the public of a local windbag knows as a Said Musa, provides a sharp image for the other side. These are play people, and you can't really call them people, because they are unread, indoctrinated, probably by a pamphlet somewhere along the way, to the point of being very insane and highly destructive; a rag empire on a cotton foundation, with enough rhetoric along the way to fill the skies forever. One simply must be a humorist under such circumstances, because how else does one mute the thunder of approaching doom? Somewhere is the nation's future is a billion dollar lottery payout, but the infinite trick will be living long enough to see it.

I enjoy literary housekeeping, just like a few hours a week of the real thing. Tidying up loose ends, crossing the last of the t's and at least trying to get a dot over tag-end-Charlie i's. E.B. White, in his otherwise sophomoric book with Strunk, does prompt the writer to say everything, and it's a good point. It's awfully easy to fall into the trap, especially in the world's laziest profession, of assuming because something is self-evident to you, the writer, it will be to your reader, and leave it out. This might be something as prosaic as a phone number, in a letter, or a mercifully-intended silence on Mormons in a more significant work. White it right. Be sure you say everything. He doesn't include suggestions on leaving stuff out to fit everything in, but then, he can't write your copy for you, either. Looking back on "The Pirates", I can't remember omitting anything, while it seems that in the million words I've published on the Net, I've only said half of what's on my mind. Part of this is the fact that I'm lazy, don't want to go through the hassle of finding another publisher, so I fully lard my manuscripts with scenes fitting Nifty's extremely tolerant requirements. This does not result in a hundred percent interface, and probably tries David's patience, but, book by book, does get most of the things worth saying in print.

False impressions. Erroneous perceptions. I had a good example last week. The water pipe burst at a neighbor's down the street, flooding same. I looked out and assumed it had rained in the night, in fact, remember being somewhat surprised because the rain invariably wakes me up, and I lie awake listening to it, feeling as snug as I always feel smug. I think I'd even heard, the previous day, that the mower had clipped a pipe. Everything in the area was dry, except a hundred feet of my own street. None of this made any difference, I saw the water, and assumed it had rained, despite significant, if passive, evidence to the contrary. Such insignificant idée fixee become very critical in the field of aviation -- false assumptions. Obviously, I never fell victim of one, but I did, on my bike once, and it would have meant a crash in a plane. I was crossing the Baja from Enemata to San Philippe, something over 120 miles. At the mid point was the one Pemex facility, a glass-topped contraption with a hand pump, circa 1930, but it only dispensed Nova, which my Honda did not care for in the least. So, I stopped, and put in half a gallon (two liters), then went on my way. In my mind, I'd refueled, and that was that. Next day I got drunk on margaritas and decided to see how fast the bike would go. I saddled up and throttled up, but before I even got to one-twenty, I ran out of fuel. By the time I was able to hustle a quart of gas, I'd sobered up enough to realize the machine would undoubtedly go faster in fifth gear than in sixth, but by that time I lacked the initiative to find out just how fast eighty-three horsepower could propel a vehicle weight under five hundred pounds. Anyhow, the story fits because half-doing something is not doing it, and may amount to not doing it at all.

I'm wondering about the word count on "Creative Camp" of the banal-sounding -- guess again -- title It topped out at 1,303 kilobytes, and, I thought, 385,000 words. This story is approaching the same byte count, at only 230,000 words, so, again, a false impression. I don't think I'm under any misapprehension in declaring sometime in the next day or two, I'll have written the longest Internet novel, and thus be able to claim first and second place, with "Blissy's Song" and "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters" good candidates for third and fourth place. Someday it would be nice to not only be in the top ten, but to be the entire top ten. (Beware the monstrous ego, for a slave of you it will gladly make.) Since it's a subject of more than passing interest, it would be nice to know, just out of curiosity, what other long-ball fiction, written exclusively for the World Wide Web, is out and about.

One bummer on the re-install is that it cleaned out my spell check dictionary. I wonder if there's a "Save Changes to Dictionary" button. One of those everyone-should-have problems. While on ultra minutia, I should also mention my ten dollar keyboard, which still responds like new, many millions of characters, to say nothing of three years, down the road. The markings have completely worn off seven keys, and half off on three others, I live funky, in spite of my housekeeping efforts, with six cats, and have never cleaned it, other than wiping off tobacco residue. My monitor began acting glitchy a couple of months ago, so now I leave it on all the time, and it's back to its flawless self in spite of its near twenty-thousand hours of use. The sound is back, sort of; my Sierra pool demo sounded great for half an hour, then signed off to dummyland. Perhaps it's the fifteen dollar sound card the shop installed to replace my apparently defective 128 brand-name card. The modem is back online, that's the crucial thing, and I've yet to even try the printer, so who knows about that. All in all, a machine with ten percent of Sloggo's capacity, but with its stove bolt reliability, would be impressive. It's nice to pay homage and express faith, and, if it's for a machine, not a leader, that's the way it is. Once in awhile something teaches you that you had no idea of what perfect could be. General Motors cars tend to be that way, and of course, the late-model PC. Samantha fits the bill on the human scale, which is fortuitous, least I be mistaken for a motor-brained meathead.

Hideous post-Christmas Sunday. At this rate, I wouldn't dare take the machine out for fear of flooding it. We've undoubtedly had more violent weather in the last six months than in my previous twelve years living in Dangriga, combined. If you want the lush green of the tropics, this is how it's paid for. Then you need your yard chopped every couple of weeks, and that costs more. Is it all worth it? Yea, though I ponder, I know not, for, forsooth, one would have to be bent of mind and weak of loins to wish tarrying a moment elsewhere. To find is not to travel. Wish the same could be said of fishing, but to troll is often not to catch. (or they'd call it "catching")

Behold, the sun. "Hold the sun," is what one normally wants to say in the Caribbean, but after five days, it's welcome. I think things are green enough, and watching snowy egrets landing and taking off from the big field just to the east confirms it. I suppose, with a complete open choice, I'd live in Ireland. All that green and gross weather. Just my thing. Samantha as a bursting lily-skinned colleen, oh my-my. Speaking of which, she is becoming more aggressive every day, teaching herself, with no help from me, the finer point of being a temptress and covering all the prerequisites for Wanton 101, in the process. If I can ever catch my breath, I'll explain to her that getting an older guy ready is the same as getting a young guy ready for the third or fourth time (if memory serves); a skill set well worth developing for use in her thirties, when I'm gone, and she may be interested in the good-old younger set. That's for all-night sessions, though, as nooners and quick afternoon pokes were never my thing

I think I've made a small area newspaper which wonders, in print, about teen girls giving their bodies to MATURE men. Would the writer have the girls give themselves to immature men? How about boys? The only chance most girls have in this town is to find someone like me that gives a rat's ass about more than their ass. Not the way it should be, but the way it largely is, and even so begging the question as to what a girl who can't multiply five times five has to offer besides her body.

One advantage to a forty-two year age differential you might not have thought of is that if one wants to concentrate, say, for instance, he's writing a long novel, and he suggests to his wife she might want to go out and play wither her friends, off she goes, happy as a clam on quahog day. Samantha's gone buyinshop with Elston, and probably half the considerable neighborhood, and it should be at least a few years before I have to worry about her attaching herself to one of the neighborhood gin mills.

We are born with the right instincts, but god neuters them, and, in the process, turns a bovine species of slob into warmongering antilovers. Surviving this poltroon leaves one facing women, and their love of defects. "The Hundred Worst Things about Him? Join our nationwide survey." "Is One Secret Too Many? Find out what our leading contributors think." "His Past / Your Future. Cautionary tales from our readers." "This Month's Losers Winner. Our worst of the year." "What If He Ever Fights Back? Advice from the manufacturers of Kevlar and Bell helmets." "Is His Eternal Memorial Big Enough for the Two of You? More expert advice." "Keeping his Fortune Forever. Five top psychics report." "Can You Trust Even His Mother? You may wish to skip this one." "A Microscope for Your Marriage? Mary Blake chimes in with razor focus and laser-splitting, cell-by-cell insight." "Is Tyne Daley Simply It All? Last year's survey reviewed." "Whose Waistline Is It, Anyway? Sometimes sharing can be a good thing." "Don't Tend, Pretend. Medical experts on avoiding his kid." "How Low Can He Go? Tips to identify and exploit thresholds, compiled by staff." And, finally: "How Woe Can You Go? Five-thousand words from Ma'am Overboard's' dynamic hall-of-fame couple, Anne Marie Fairchild and former-husband, Lawyer Tom Cruise, authors of Art, Schmart: Trading talent for land can work for more than just your realtor', subject: Selling number one to number two.". That's just the index of everywoman's ideal periodical, a single month out of the year. God, Adam and Eve, and women. Exclude mothers, and it's still overkill in the misery department sufficient to curb natural instincts. Fault finding and grudge holding; long memories and short books-I-have-read lists. I keep thinking of Samantha as the ultimate girl, perfume to pop shots, but it's gradually dawning on my overworked brain she may well be the only girl. She even makes love like an eager boy, which is why afternoon delights are sacrificed for the approaching all night. And on top of it all, I'm supposedly getting my feet wet on a million-word literary colossus.

Sun gone. It was only out for an hour. I think one spring in Dubuque, we went for three months without solar intervention.

I wonder what the incest factor with Samantha amounts to. We've never spent a night, and very few days, under the same roof. She has a natural, living, breathing father. Yet she is very much a girl of my own creation, how the hell else could she be so perfect? Sometimes there does seem to be sufficient justice floating around out there; I was dealt twos in the mother and sister hands and drew another when it came to a wife, but now it's my turn as trick boss and I've shuffled the ace of hearts neatly just where I want it. Principally, this means she's lighthearted, and I'm teaching her to be conscientious while remaining conscious of not becoming too conscientious, and especially conscious of not expecting me to be conscientious. Working it any other way is likely to be confusing, because light-heartedness can't be taught or bought, it is a natural state, or it's not. So, starting with fair and sunny, most of the time, we work toward monetary discipline and overall reliability, which can be taught, achieving a perfection so flawless even the imperfections are cute.

Back-to-back three-thousand word days. Must be the season, a time to drift along, dreaming and taking things as they come -- who has time to work? Cleaning house for the new year. Wouldn't want to forget an addendum to the laziness list. Frick and Frack and their proselytizing con-game, answers-to-call ilk. Truth to tell, I've lived in this town twelve years, I'm virtually always home, and, though I see white-shirt-and-tie twins routinely, but a single pair has darkened my doorway. They must have a secret napping bungalow, or, if they're bright, they merely exchange residences at eight a.m., then switch back at four in the afternoon. If memory serves, Alex said two people showed for their Christmas service. Talk about cost of sales! I'll give the noodle-brained elders credit on two counts. First, they did seem to speak fast Spanish, though it may have just been a few ready phrases (they were speaking to a six year old), and, second, they are shinier and more chipper, having had two show up for their principal annual service, than I am as number one artist of all time. It's a little daunting to think what might happen to oil equities if Button One or Button Two ever succeeded at anything; the energy released would topple Kerr McGee and Exxon, and cold fusion would go on the books as fact, not urban legend. Leave us save our lives by not holding our breaths in anticipation.

Try remembering when you have an inclination to dismiss me as a raving tyrant cum Looney Tune that you are supplying a, the coffin, b, the nails, and, c, the hammer. If you were living in such a manner as to, so to speak, supply other tools and materials, I have little doubt you'd find me effervescent without being fizzy, bubbling, and thoroughly delightful, with a lovely bright aftertaste. You must allow yourself to be punished by your gods, for, otherwise, they are obviously meaningless (I mean look where defying, even passively, this doctrine has left you). Of course, there are wonderful gods. Allah, for example, saideth unto you, "Alight, my tired ones, alight. Alight from your camels and rest upon the great softness of my sand. Five times each day you shall do this in my name, and don't let me catch you napping, tee-hee." What a fellow! Then, needless to say, there's Yahweh, unutterable of name, by the logic of the sophomore, yet this syllable-less creation behooves of his faithful that they wear huge eyeglasses and mink hats, sized as the mill wheel is sized, so all may know of their wealth and their stylish inclinations. Competition like that, where does a mere literary deity turn? To the next page, one would suppose; anyway, that's my plan.

I will see you folks next year, when, fear not, Jose, Tina, Rick, Nancy, Rob, Allen, and a large supporting cast will return, and your life will begin again.

TEMP. FILE END 12/30/02

:Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga

xxx