Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Film Fini

   (Loosely based on "Photoplay" and other writings.)

   by Feather Touch

   Good-bye to the age of film, that's what I was about, wandering the
Highlands on a nostalgia tour, tramping brow and scarp with a last dozen
rolls of classic 120 Ektachrome and a trusty Konica "perfect format" 6X7
which delivered eight huge slides, at least compared to 35mm, on each.  The
camera had been fitted with the latest in computer designed and robotically
manufactured lenses, which, in turn, had received state-of-the-art coating,
allowing supreme quality negatives to be cast from the transparencies,
thence, prints as fine as prints could be.



   It's the digital age.  Small.  Impossible.  My cigarette-pack size Elph
was good for nearly a hundred exposures that produced finely detailed and
richly colored prints hardly bigger than the Konica's negative, three by
four inches, but few looked at the results twice; twenty times would be
closer to the mark.  In fact, my digicam was smaller than the light meter
for my film camera, in addition to which the latter needed a ponderous
tripod that tripled its weight and added, on the bright side, at least
enough bulk to ward off an errant farm dog.



   That's a little of the technical background.  The artistic side consists
of finding a sinuous juxtaposition of shapes, be they rocks in a wall or
mountains against each other, composing precisely, as would a painter, and
waiting for nice light.  With typical scurrying clouds that had had enough
of the North Sea, the light was a foregone conclusion, so I'd spent the
morning trying to find a cow posing at a strategic crossing of walls mixed
with gates or a gorse bush somehow teasing an outcropping of stone.  I'm no
champion or anything, but my portfolio pleases me greatly and friends do
tend to stare and ignore my presence while flipping slowly through albums
of prints, slides on the viewing box, or digital images on my .22mm
monitor. But once there was a comment, more incidental than deliberate,
concerning the lack of life in my work, the lack of people.  (Plus, there
are damn few cows.) In fact, over one five year period I believe a single
cat was the only animate creature to flood my lens.



   I recovered quickly from the error of my ways, now searching out
especially children about their daily activities or posing in silly groups,
and include some variant of life in a dozen out of a hundred photographs.
Thus it was I crossed, like the bear, yet another mountain, to find myself
looking down on a picture book village probably little changed in five
centuries.  Reading widely and traveling moderately over more than enough
decades, I'd come to realize that where there is a village, there are
likely to be people, and where there are people, there are likely to be
children, and where there are children there is relief from any stigma as a
mechanical photobot.  Such wisdom had I gained through deliberate exposure
to the variances and vicissitudes of reality, I further knew it was easy to
go downhill.  People and ease of passage.  Damned if the Highlands didn't
have it all.



   It was a mid-June Sunday morning about ten o'clock, sun high enough to
blaze pure light through the onion skin of the atmosphere, light free of
the tinges of gold that not only looks terrible in any color photo, but
which can't be focused.  None of that crummy stuff around, and shadows at
the near vertical when the sun was free of clouds.



   The obligatory dog barks faded as I reached the high street.  I wandered
aimlessly but with eyes like a snake, my prey anything that popped out from
the ordinary.  A broken downspout of ancient patina served, a wheelbarrow
pleasingly posed against a garden shed, I found most pleasing.  With houses
and occupied structures there are two ways.  Sneak up, well, not really
sneak, but approach at a quiet walk, composing as you advance, swing the
tiny camera into position, take maybe ten seconds to be sure all relevant
corners and termini of objects are included, and release the shutter.  Do
this for an entire day, and maybe one person will say hey, wait a minute,
but they shrug it off as not worth the bother.  The other way consists of
setting up the tripod, taking readings with the meter, adjusting the camera
perfectly, focusing, locking up the mirror, grabbing the cable release,
then making the exposure.  Now they think you're Joe Hollywood and take an
interest, positive or negative, and, in either event, time consuming and a
distinct break in the severe concentration it takes to work at top form. 
But nostalgia is nostalgia and I don't take pictures for money, so it was
time to make the best of it, a thanks-for-the-memories tour.



   Then I came to the cottage.  Actually heard it before I saw it, two kids
giggling, then I passed from behind a rose bush and clapped eyes on a
picture book dooryard with a small cottage and two youngsters in the
window. The girl, about twelve, was laughing as her brother, that was easy
to tell, huddled over her doing something to her right shoulder.  The girl
spotted me immediately and waved in welcome, her brother immediately
following suit.  They kept waving so I approached, touching the camera, at
which they both nodded.  I took a second look as I entered through the open
gate, checking for any sign of manic display, goofiness, or compulsion to
show off, which ruins a photo more surely than an octopus making love to
the lens.  No, just alert smiles and happy countenances, so I proceeded
moving to within four or five feet of the open window.  The boy kept at his
task which I gathered, since he had a blue pen in his hand, was tattooing
his sister's right shoulder.  I'd diddled with the gear enough that I was
able to snap several shots with the little Elph as I was going through my
gyrations with the big camera, aligning it, reading the light, setting it,
and wondering if the Ektachrome would hold up in the shadows of the
cottage's interior.



   The girl was terrific, smiling and smiling without the least trace of
artifice, and her brother nearly her equal, a study in concentration as he
decorated the girl, but frequently looking at the camera with a friendly
face and satisfying smile.  The Konica set in place, I pulled out the Elph,
switched to Display mode, found the best image of six or eight on the LCD
and used the little steel lever adjacent the shutter release to zoom in one
the image in the display until there was a medium close-up of sister and
brother.  As I reached the window I reversed the camera in my hand.  They
gazed at the jewel-quality stainless steel case, then their eyes popped out
as they saw themselves in huge living color, albeit an inch high.  I don't
suppose you'd want to use the little Digital Elph for spy photography from
a satellite, but for breaking the ice - not that I'd detected any - it is
unsurpassed.  I clicked through the several images I'd taken of them,
zooming quickly in on each.  Before long they'd seen all and I changed to
the next image, the wheelbarrow, and the next, the hanging downspout, then
on back through my other work of the morning, twenty or thirty images
(three with the film camera).



   As I stood leaning against the frame of the window they'd become more
and more intrigued with the camera, and who knows, perhaps the images I was
cycling through the tiny but way crisp LCD.  Jess, the boy had laid his pen
aside, and Alice, his sister had cuddled close.  I was about to hand the
Elph to Jess so the two could play with it while I returned to the tripod
when I woke up a little and noticed how cuddled they indeed were, not only
pressed firmly together, certainly more than was required to look at the
camera, and his hips surging unconsciously against his sister.  In the
first place, they were beauties, the fifteen year old resembling Rick
Schroeder at his "Lonesome Dove" age and the girl a pixie sprite, not
unlike the kid with pigtails in the silly "Flour the children" cell phone
ad.  And way photogenic as the LCD on the camera had proved in an instant.
(By the way, I use non-prescription reading glasses when viewing the tiny
display.)



   I froze, my heart misunderstanding and galloping on ahead.  Continued
flipping through the electronic images.  Took my bearings.  Chanced a
second look as far through the window as I could see.  Yes, she was pressed
tightly to the handsome boy, yes he was thrusting gently but obviously
against her.  By now the two were discussing the photos, guessing where
this one had been taken and telling me where the next had come from.  Going
back and forth through them, flattering me no end, but not nearly enough,
as artistic visions tumbled through the functioning five percent of my
brain like boxcars derailing on a mountain curve.  Art is full of what-ifs
and they can pop up anywhere as any photographer caught sans camera
(impossible in the digital age) or artist minus his sketch pad knows; when
magic shows itself as clearly as steam from a chimney on an icy morning,
lasts for a few moments, and is then absorbed back into the commonplace. 
Yes, it takes highly honed reflexes and an almost paranormal sense of
possibility to excel at even the craft of the lens, to say nothing of the
art.  Alert, prescient, and dogged.  It took too long to achieve these,
make them mine, but perhaps slow growth IS best in the long run.  In any
event, the message somehow filtered synapse by synapse to where it would do
some good, in the first place, making me hugely erect, and, in the second,
rendering me a croaking frog.  In the third place, in left me at a loss for
words.  After all, one does not talk to a stone wall to encourage it to
weave its way up the side of a hill at just the right angle and pass a
gnarled tree at just the right distance, no, that would be useless, but
then so was my voice.  And the kids had become hushed, too.  Jess had
watched me go through the short button-pushing routine enough times that I
did hand him the Elph and he and his little beauty cuddled the closer as he
obeyed her instructions to go forward and backward through the twenty-five
or so images.



   I looked at the Konica standing abandon a few feet away, but my feet had
taken root and I moved not an inch.  The kids were back on their own
images, each picking a favorite of the half dozen casual snaps.  It was the
girl who spoke first.  She introduced them and I was able to rasp out my
own name, wondering at the accuracy I displayed under ferocious duress. 
"Can you take more of us?" Alice asked.

   "They're beautiful," her brother added.

   "That's on account of you not looking like gnomes or trolls," I said,
startling myself with my own voice.

   "Will you?" the pig-tailed lass asked again.  "You can come in.  We'll
make you lunch.  Mum and Dad are down in London, but they'd be inviting you
if they were here.  Might not let you go until you'd at least had pie - as
in good-old American apple pie - and milk or coffee."

   Tempting, but how, pray tell, was I meant to move?  The slightest
physical exertion on top of my psychic state, and, not to put too fine a
point on it, the galloping would stop.  "I'll put a slice in the microwave
and get out some cheese," Jess said, and it was his equality with the
sprite at his side that really helped.  It would take a little time before
I could stand free of the window casing and attempt walking, but, meantime,
I could nod and say yes, thank you.  Jess smiled happily and left for the
kitchen.

   "I think of him as Arthur," the girl said prettily, not gushing, quite,
"Lancelot and Arthur in one."

   "Well," I stammered, "it's less glamorous, but I think of you as a girl
in a silly television commercial back home.  She's not on screen for long,
but she doesn't have to be."

   "I'll go to the door," she responded with a shy smile, and for a moment
I missed my old camera with its sturdy support.  But when the door to the
cottage opened, I was there, and she helped out physically, as her brother
had psychically, by a laying on of hands which politely hauled me across
the threshold and into the living room of the exquisite cottage.  I heard
the sound of a door closing and the beeping of the oven being set as Alice
guided me to a stuffed chair, sitting on the arm so she could again look
through the images.  "Will the battery wear out if I look too long?" she
said, now operating the jewel-like Elph on her own.

   "After an hour or two," I said, "but I carry a couple of spares, so it's
no matter."

   "How many pictures can you take?" was her next question, and, a new
lover of the prosaic, at least as interlude, I told her about five hundred.
"And it flashes, too," she noted, proving there was nothing wrong with her
eyes as the flash on the camera is impossibly small to believe in spite of
its eleven foot range.  How nice it was to see her fascinated.  So blasé
have we become, so many channels, so many gigabytes, so many gadgets we've
been battered by tech waves until they make us seasick.  She was holding in
her hands a supreme and actual miracle.  It could, if one wanted to, record
over two thousand images on a single memory stick, and a dozen batteries
could be carried in one hand, each good for a couple of hundred exposures.
Alice examined it from all angles, stroked it ("it even feels a little
warm") and, girl-of-the-world, kissed it.

   "I'm falling in love out here," she chirped in the direction of the
kitchen, "you'd better come out here and save me."

   "I'm falling in love in here," the boy replied, "so you'll have to save
yourself."

   "He does like Mom's pie," the girl smiled, going on to explain they'd
lived for much of their lives in Montana and so it was mom instead of mum.



   There was another beep from the oven, the quiet rattle of dishes, and
Jess returned, pie warm, cheese cold, and coffee hot.  She was interested.
He was competent.  Hadn't they made a musical of a chap tramping off into
the Highlands and discovering paradise?  And a la mode, with pie on top? 
And a full battery?



   "What are your folks doing in London?" I asked.

   "A play with some friends over from Sheridan," Alice said, "that's not
quite in Montana, but pretty close." I told them I'd spent a summer in
Decker.

   "It's a dot on the map," Jess said, and as anyone who'd been there would
realize, he was talking about the infamous strip mine (coal).  A bonding
comment because I felt the same way.  The area is both legendarily and
indescribably vast, the mining complex, by comparison, a penny on a
football field.  You had to be a catatonic moron to raise an eyebrow - it
was after all, lifeblood energy being taken from the ground, not baubles
for the idle rich - and thus it had become a giant issue of its day.

   "Grow good apples here, do they not?" Alice, now seated on the sofa
beside her brother, asked.  I didn't know the tears showed.  Nah, too old
too cry, but it was steaming good, fruity, which I normally dislike, and
slightly spicy.

   "Very," I made do with saying, adding another "very," and asking that
she pass my compliments on to their mother.

   "They're staying overnight," the girl then said, "maybe tomorrow night,
too.  It's the first time we've been alone together since we kinda grew
up."

   "Well, I'll take a few more pictures when the coffee's done, and leave
you in peace," I responded.

   "No," they both said with a single voice, blushing beautifully at their
presumption.  "I mean," Jess elaborated, "if you have to be somewhere,
sure, but if you don't, stay here with us.  The `fridge is full and both of
us can do breakfast in our sleep."

   They sat looking at me expectantly.  Wanting me to speak?  Ah, the
young, unburden by the toil and grieves of the world, so sweet in their
beliefs that anything is possible, that where there was a will there was a
way.  Then again, I'd not fossilized or petrified that I'd notices, so
maybe they had a point, the delicious young.

   "You're sure?"

   "Absolutely," Jess said (proving he'd been exposed to American
vernacular even if he hadn't lived there).  "Mom or Dad will be calling
this evening, we'll tell them, and you don't look like the kind who'd call
twenty friends over for a rage."

   I was returning to a consciousness beyond the clinical technicality.  I
doubted it would last so I made best use I could.  "I'd think here in the
Highlands they'd call them `flings,'" quoth I.



   The pixie queen of the world smiled patently.  "Good point," quoth she
in response, "we could serve haggis and everyone would fling, make no
mistake." They obviously loved their village and surrounding mountains,
their enthusiasm over the pictures had been evidence, aplenty, so the jest
was incidental and at least neutral in spirit."

   "I though they might `curl' in these parts," I responded, again, making
the best of a quasi-coherent interlude.





   And, not to sustain it, it's essay time.  New readers, only, are allowed
to "curl," you know, the kind applicable to one's cookies, not stones
thrown on the ice.  You veterans have had enough thrills and spills along
the way to sit on your hands, zip your lips, and let the master get on with
yet another tedious commercial interlude which will probably be almost
entirely devoted to himself.  Once in awhile I resort to a cheesy gambit of
employing a column of five or six asterisks in the manner of blaze marks in
the wilderness, but that's like using a hook without a barb and an enabler
of escapism.  There is no escape, at least for me.  Born patently and hands
down an outright American monarch, in fact, surpassing traditional
standards by several times.  I can run and hide and be totally ignored, but
it does not good.  I didn't have to touch the sword, it danced from the
stone on sight and inserted itself quivering like an arrow in a movie,
well, with such precision I've always considered it, you know, a near miss.
That brought up the question of who to chop up.  My own subjects?  Why? 
How regal would that kind of behavior be?  But lo, the morons tried it on
me, and the fight was on.  And goes on.  No lover's quarrel, either.  My
culture characterizes me in unholy terms.  Pedophile.  So stigmatized the
only time in my life I've seen a police officer suggest suicide to a perp
was Sipowicz to an okay looking guy, apartment, duh'uh, filled with books,
who'd had some minor contact with a boy otherwise lost to the street. 
Fortunately, for S., the bars are filled with liquor, and the writers of
"NYPD Blue" turn the show into a comedy by supplying him with one buxom
love interest after - ha, ha, ha - another.  To be castigated by a
pig-faced Slav, of yo the Slavic hoards that terrorized the planet with
their lowest of low pillage and rape, and who, today, make the border of
Poland and Germany one of exacting differentiation, is what it can't
otherwise be, and that is royal tribute.  Of course, I would see it that
way, but it comes with the territory so we tip the crown to enemies who
help make our case, and march on.



   Approaching a thousand shots with the Canon.  Silly thing counts `em
all, but I'm sure that's an entirely useful feature in some applications,
and it will undoubtedly come in handy when the task of compiling a CD can
no longer be postponed.  Dangriga keeps supplying images by the dozens and
hundreds, and it's interesting what a difference bicycles make.  They've
become a real theme, making a B+ image out of what would be a C, or not
worth trying in the first place, time and time again.  Must have fifty or
so studies and I rate them among the best.  In fact, it's difficult to see
three or four bikes parked against a building, without beauty attached, a
flow of form and color radiating in all directions.  Here, it's very
cliché, every day, every where, but methinks it will play in Peoria.  Yet
there is an ultimate number and if the market isn't small as far as the
basic concept goes, it does limit the number of displays, the number of
repetitions of the tropic/rustic scene.  Spiro Agnew was honest enough to
say if you've seen one slum, you've seen `em all, and the same may go for
idyllic jungle habitats: weathered wood, lush foliage, and drying laundry.
But then one actually thinks of Peoria, where one has actually been, and
how useless a camera would be in that setting, and realizes there may be,
in Industrialized-Squared America, a market for thousands and even tens of
thousands of images, nostalgic as well as bucolic.  Of course, Peoria could
bury its utility lines and spruce itself up, so one day the market would
collapse because folks didn't have to go out and buy what they had in their
own locale, but with the welfare, entitled, and pension crowds getting all
there is, that may take awhile.



   Actually do need a bigger memory card.  It's a whole new concept in
shooting stills.  Taking dozens of shots you feel won't make the grade,
because every once in awhile what looks like dross in the viewfinder jumps
right off the screen after a little finagling with PhotoDeluxe.  A hundred
shots in two hours seems to be a standard in these neighborhoods (where in
I-squared America there are vast regions where two shots in a hundred hours
would be more realistic) and that uses less than half the battery.  Pay
through the nose, of course, eight-five dollars for a 32-meg card, where
Stateside you might get 512 for the same price.  Anyhow, I like the
discipline imposed.  Mission parameters.  Go out, get a hundred pictures,
come home, take ten or twelve hours to edit and retouch them, and repeat.
Often enough more turns out to be less, plus there's the nostalgic aspect,
because photography became popular when Kodak began selling a camera
pre-loaded with film for a hundred exposures.  In addition, it's
soldier-like, taking a hundred rounds on a mission.  Finite.  Do or die.



   Article in "Slate" (MSN's browser magazine) on marriage keyed on
Massachusetts legalizing, or something like that, gay nuptials.  Don't you
have to be too trendy?  Wouldn't such astute correctness get on your
partner's nerves on top of the fact your goatee is always more precisely
trimmed than his?  You think Peoria's bad, try my native state (and yes, P.
is a city).  I've gotta horse an' he eats a lotta hay, I'd rather be
dishwater than any-thing like gay.  Yuk.  Hitler was, once again, right on
the money.  Even the kids in Wyoming had their point.  Gay is ugly.  Like
wearing a suit with an open flap so your ass can hang out.  Jose and I, by
chance (while traveling), ended up spending a dozen or so nights in the
same bed - back to back, each on our own side.  We were responsive
partners, an hour a week, and nothing to do with gay, which is a psycho
disease like alcoholism.  As far as I'm concerned, we don't want coy
couples around us, especially the older ones frantically trying to look one
day younger, any more that we want to associate with stumbling, slurring
drunks, maudlin or hostile.  One of those areas of behavior that brings to
mind the phrase: zero tolerance.  Gay men should grow up, mentor a dozen
boys, years on end, in hopes of the - willing - favors of one or two. 
Don't marry a woman: that's good advice for anyone, and commit your
resources elsewhere.  Actually, the article reaffirms that half of
conventional marriages do work out, and over ninety percent of people say
they are, at the moment, happy with their partner, would choose him or her
again.  The other set of numbers dished up in recent months was that men
and women married at least five years feel they are one half of one percent
happier than they were when they were single.  This plays nicely to my
theme of It Doesn't Make Any Difference (reading and being interested are
what count), a safe place to leave it for the moment



   Oddest day, I began working at seven-something this morning.  That never
happens.  I live the teen idyll, working `till two or three in the morning,
then z's until nine or ten.  Weird to have the day's writing well underway
by nine-thirty.  Disorienting.  I like being fully human by being fully
asleep in the eye of the eastern sun.





   A theme I try to avoid is optimism.  Read too much, know how events can
trigger and multiply in waves of unintended consequences to cause chaos,
and, abstractly, so far, what social chaos would do to our profoundly
complex group dynamic.  Yet the economy, according to recent news, is
growing at the fastest rate since '84.  Once in awhile I find a rat hole,
burrow in it, and wave a little sign saying I may be wrong, I may not
understand.  Admit to being a doom-and-gloom alarmist, a Chicken Little,
for none but aberrant reasons, you know, the bee-in-the-bonnet thing.  What
did the people in 1903 know even of 1923 with widespread paving,
electricity, and millions of cars?  And we could be in for a replay.  The
system is of a complexity far beyond comprehension, provable by the fact
that the Nineties faked out the economists, and Greenspan, particularly,
year after year.  But what's the driving force?  Pretty obvious in the last
'03 with the Industrial Revolution half way through its sweet spot, but
today we have its opposite, the decline of cyberspace from adventurous,
high-cost products to hum-drum appliances, cheap new and all but free,
used. Nothing on the horizon, for even if a digicam mania swept the nation
it's only a few hundred to play, or is there an alchemy in, say, Jerry
Springer and bottled water, beyond the grasp of a feeble mind, albeit it
one with an artistic bent?  Does obesity merely mean more spent on food,
therapists, and clothes, keeping money in circulation and paying the way?
Is the extortion of unions and their endless millions of pensioners another
positive dynamic, absurd as it seems?  Are huge houses and vehicles an
everlasting force, government inexhaustible in its role as the fairy-tale
goose, NASA about to discover the moon is made of addictive cheese?  I mean
I'm not complaining here, I live on dividends and interest so it would be
plumb neat to have them go up, though, as a writer, and student of the
waves of history, if not conversant in all its details, I can't help
looking down from the parapet to see exactly what holdeth up ye tower.  Pot
and coke?  Men investing in kids they meet in chat rooms?  Walls of soap
and body lotion?  Bottled water?  Cheese futures?  The only factor cited
recently has been immigration, but that's the merest fraction of us-all. 
In any event, it's a marvelous conjuring act, and if one questions how long
Houdini can actually remain suspended in a single spider web, maybe it will
turn out that it's the questioning which is inappropriate.  Plus, pessimism
is boring - unlikable - so I wrack my brain to find other topics on which
to hold forth, by instinct eschewing an overindulgence in adults, however
ludicrous and amusing their antics, and also smug in the knowledge only
those living in a roughly parallel (or better) world in 2023 can laugh at
me.  To paraphrase the Virginia Slims ad campaign of a generation ago,
you've got a long way to go, baby.



   Three trials.  (Could it be that simple?  Kobe, Martha, and Michael are
pulling my dough into the whirlwind by way of downloading fees.) Courtroom
drama.  Martha doing thyme, that was a good one.  Actually (I know I
overuse the word, comes with publishing five or six thousand words a day),
she I like.  Total American classic, Slavic look and all.  What she needs
is time away from her industrial retrace to see if she has the next step in
her, becoming the kind of artist who can do some good, a literary artist.
All of `em.  Stephen King, Larry McMurtry, the lot.  Get the fuck away from
the money pit, sequester yourself with whatever lights your fire in a
semi-remote area of Mexico or Central America, not the drunken islands, and
if nothing happens, at least you tried.  Look how obviously it has worked
for me, and have faith, plus ye of running starts should have several
decades on a mud-cake artist like myself, you know, able only to profit
from the inanity of others.



   Next time I'm getting a plastic camera.  My stainless steel instrument
is the embodiment of a child's fantasy device, an incredible jewel of a
mechanism, in its own right, and capable of magic tricks.  In other words,
stainless or not, the steel exerts a magnetic pull.  So precise and
exquisite, so useful and functional, itself the supreme work of art yet
devised.



   Alice and her brother agreed and it took them several minutes to
convince me they really did want me to stay and not just hang around and
take more pictures of them, mailing prints I could make in my hotel room in
Inverness.

   "It's going to be outside the lines with us, tonight, anyway," the girl
observed, "and we think you're beautiful as well as nice, and yes, you try
at the humor thing, so the door is locked until we do breakfast." I gave a
moment's thought to the film camera, but I could fetch it anytime, and, in
any event, it could do little justice to the ethereal young couple sitting
six feet away.  Nor were they about plunging into each other, lewd gasping
and squeaking springs.  Instead they led me into a converted greenhouse
where their computer lived.  Since it's less than no bother, I commonly
carry a USB cable and disc with drivers and PhotoDeluxe in my backpack, and
so was able to boot in the Canon and we could look at full-size images of
the surrounding countryside, full-size being about five by seven inches,
above which size the image from the Elph goes soft even it if it doesn't
begin to pixelize.  No matter, the gems are for looking into, and many we
preferred as small as three by four inches.  Both brother and sister
gravitated to the camera's macro capability, its ability to not only focus
but perfectly expose from distances as small as two inches.  Model
collection, doll collection, his room, her room, dozens of shots; had to
get used to not being required to go through an engineering extravaganza,
just point, allow a second or two for the camera to respond, and shoot. 
The flash fires in a double pulse, the camera measuring the luminance from
the first to set the second, which occurs within a twentieth of a second;
results from excellent to perfect.  Portraits of the two of them in
different get-ups, and wide shots of every room in their modernized cottage
(with way low ceilings).  Shoot, upload, oh and ah, and repeat (had a
vaguely dejavue aspect to it).  And no flirting, nothing suggestive or coy:
zero Lolita.  I could have been ninety and spavined.  Eventually, even in
June, the sun would set and night would fall.  Like that, the hours passed
and we had a hundred images to review, a dozen of them of possible
commercial quality, if I'd been into that kind of thing.  (If I did art
with a camera, I'd feel compelled to share it regardless of compensation,
but anyone could take the same pix I get, so it's a craft, only.  Like
many, I'm always looking FOR that elusive art, that genius that renders one
unique, while, at the same time possessing the honesty to admit that if I
did find it I might be inclined to treat the whole matter as a joke.)



   The Western exposure of the young couple was evident in the pantry of
the cottage.  Did I suppose they grew jalapeno peppers in Scotland?  I
can't remember, anyway, as we gravitated toward the kitchen and food, I
spied several cans of Del Monte peppers on top of a liberal supply of
ground beef and condiments.  They turned me loose for a round of Perfect
Burgers and went back to the computer.  I sizzled and fried and dabbed
(mayonnaise and horseradish), then sliced a fat chili on top of each
burger, after which, they lost interest in the pictures.  Then, behold, a
bottle of champagne emerged and we adjourned back to the living room, where
the children pulled me between themselves, girl on left, boy on right, as
we sat on the leather sofa.  I suppose, subconsciously, we relegated the
Elph to miracles of the past and present, not in any prejudicial way, but
in response to anticipated miracles, of, ironically, the most ancient
nature.  I'd been there four hours, give or take, and significant bonding
had occurred: was a deeper attachment to ensue?



   Alice, the quiet, soft-spoken leader of the young pair answered the
question.  "Can we talk openly about it?" she asked, "I mean, do you know
anything about brothers being with their sisters?  Incest?"

   Fact of the matter was, I'd written the book on the subject and followed
it with half a shelf of supporting documentation, so I couldn't sit there
with a straight face and play dumb.  "It's forbidden by every law, statute,
canon, and custom in the world," I answered, "no exceptions, no mitigating
or extenuating circumstances apply.  In the States they gave a kid placed
in his sister's bed by his parents forty years for raping the girl.  It
makes people, and especially those in law enforcement, feel high and mighty
and brimming with rectitude to stomp a perv, a characteristic they share
with convicted murderers."



   "But it still happens, right?" the pig-tailed beauty asked.

   "One girl in five," I answered, citing commonly published statistics
backed up by a limited number of anecdotal accounts from female
acquaintances.  It reduced the florid judge to a state of absurdity, the
system to one which may have actually reached a high point in the Simpson
case (he did a little county time).  "And lots of them are - capital-R -
raped," I waxed onward.  "If you eliminate girls who are fat or intensely
homely or disagreeable, and that's a huge number, you'd probably discover a
reality in which a sister, daughter, niece, or cousin of your comeliness
and personality would very likely end up at least being offered an
incestuous relationship."

   "Which would alter my development, stunt my growth, and leave me a
forlorn changeling "

   "That does happen," I said, "knowledge of taboo is said to kill in
Africa, so it's strong stuff, and anorexia kills here, and it's probably
Freudian, so there are a lot of victims out there."

   "And the best therapy in the world," the girl said, her eyes as serious
as mine, "would be for you to record my brother and me, and let us prove in
no uncertain terms that taboo is by no means universal, and that in fact it
is probably nothing more than perverse, hypocritical, and destructive
superstition."

   "Well," I bleated, "the camera does have a movie mode.  A few minutes at
a time, but it includes sound."

   "What will they think of next?" the flower whispered, but enough about
cameras.  What do whirring little motors, a dazzling LCD, chimes and tones
with individually variable volumes, and a clutter-free optical ground-glass
viewfinder have to do with the developing situation?  Besides, I always
wanted to try my hand on a hoary old portable with a sticking "a" key, you
know, narrative, a case-history, instead of retreaded publish-or-perish
mss.



   "Have you both waited?" I asked, deciding on the spot to do my bit to
advance any story that might be forthcoming.

   "I've never been with a girl," Jesse said.  He may have kept his mouth
shut, be was obviously thoroughly in tune with the general atmosphere.

   "And I've only been with a girl," Alice added.  Book, write thyself.

   "If your video production is to be fairly received," I responded, "the
more background data the better." Both nodded.  "Have you told each other?"
I then asked, to which they looked at each other across my lap and shook
their heads.

   "I've used the movie mode on the camera before," I said, "and it really
helps to have an outline, a storyboard, something, anything to focus on,
figuratively speaking, as we go along.

   "So," I added, "what I need to know is who wants to go first, and an
estimate in how many events might be covered as you proceed."

   "I can tell first," Jesse volunteered, "and what happened with me
includes two other stories."

   "Thanks," I said, adding: "how about the order?  By that I mean, the
order of getting naked.  Did that come before the stories you heard,
during, or after?" Alice was all ears.

   "Leif was naked when I met him," the boy responded.  I raised my finger,
got the camera from a nearby table, and switched it to video, then turned
it on.





   "Is it okay to swim here?" the twenty year old Norwegian asked the
stripling on the bank.

   "It's no wee thing to survive the cold," the thirteen year old replied.

   "Meaning you never come in?" the hiker asked.



   Jesse Whitehead leaned against an outcropping so he wouldn't fall, not
that there wasn't plenty of cool water at hand with which to revive him. 
The beauty in the river must stand six-three but probably didn't weigh more
than two hundred pounds; all swimmer to his cropped blond hair and
water-blue eyes.  He approached the bank, the river descending below his
belly button and then another inch or two, at which point he stopped.  "I'm
not wearing trunks," he said.

   "I'm not, either," the boy replied dumbly, frantic for something to say
in his totally new and very upside-down world.

   "Well," the hiker responded, introducing himself as Leif Nickerson,
"that seems a bit thoughtless.  Never can tell when you'll run across a
lonely wayfarer in want of a bit of company, and our kind originally came
from the sea, as you must be aware."

   "That was a long time ago," the thirteen year old noted.  Could anyone
so awesome, as the kids kept saying back in Montana, be fun to talk to,
too?

   "Well," his new friend chuckled, "all the more reason to return.  Do it
often enough, and after awhile you'll be down to the sea in dips."

   "Or drowned in a sea of ice chips," the child responded, astounded at
his ability to talk, much less converse.

   "In Norway, we'd call this a devil stream because the water's so hot,"
Leif said.

   "Maybe that's why there's so much land," his young friend allowed.

   "It does come in handy," the young adult agreed.

   "Do you really want me to come in with you?" Jesse then asked.

   "Yes," the beauty whispered, nodding to emphasize but with not hint of
insistence.

   "I want to," the boy on the bank blushed, "but is it okay if I keep my
underpants on?"

   "Yes," the Viking repeated, "I'm going to build a fire in a few minutes,
so, if you don't mind hanging out for an hour or so, we could dry them
out."

   "I don't have to be home until dinner at eight," the boy said, fingers
working on the buttons of his shirt.

   "Do you want me to turn my back?" the swimmer asked.

   They Yank expression: "no way," came to mind, but Jesse just shook his
head in the negative, blushing openly as he reached his last button and
opened the garment, hoping, at the same time, his friend liked looking at
him as much as he liked the opposite vision.  When he got to his belt
buckle, the young teen did half hide himself behind the outcropping,
emerging to dash across the gravel and dive into the cold water.  Leif
leaped in his direction, extremely pleased with the innate savagery of his
new acquaintance.  Most his age would take ten minutes to submerge a single
toe.  They both settled into a hard racing beat, not slowing for a hundred
yards upstream, the adult only gradually overtaking and passing the lean
and foxy youth.  Blown and given a few minutes immunity from the cold, they
paddled idly as the current carried them back to the Norwegian's camp site,
where they paddled into a backwater where the sun had warmed the water to
the near seventies, almost Turkish.



   "Do you want to get out by yourself?" the older male asked, a husky edge
to his voice.  "You can slip into your shorts and toss me your underwear
for the fire.

   "That's okay," Jesse whispered, responding to the tone in a way that
would have been way obvious but for the still-cold water.

   "Would you like to talk a little before we get out?" Leif asked, the
husky note now distinct.

   "Yes," the thirteen year old said.

   "Not a speech or anything," the man responded, "not until they get the
heating fixed, but I did want you to know that I find you very attractive,
physically attractive, as well as cute of tongue and eye, and, not to put
too fine a point on it, cut to the chase as they say in your former
domicile, I'd like to very gentle homosexual things with you until it's
time for you to go home."

   "I understand," Jesse whispered, adding: "can we move nearer the bank
where I can sit in your lap?" In other writings I throw in the occasional
reader quiz for the fun of it, but I don't think Leif's response would be
challenging enough to guess to make it worth the effort.  In any event, the
moved several yards toward the bank, the naked adult wriggled into the
sand, and the boy into his lap.

   "Do you know about being molested?" the man whispered after a few
moments of enjoying the relative warmth and getting over the shock of their
bodies coming together.

   "It always seems like a witch hunt," the boy replied, "mass psychosis;
this priest, that coach, as if they were the first emissaries of hell and
practitioners of fiendish new rituals."

   "Tut-tut is the universal language," the powerful athlete agreed,
allowing the young beauty to take a tentative seat on his mid-thighs
without making any effort to pull him back.

   "It's so pervasive," Jesse responded, "it's a wonder all boys don't
experiment just out of rebellion."

   "Have you?" Leif whispered softly over the child's shoulder, "and you
don't have to answer; totally your business."

   "No," the boy said.  "I have a cute little sister, eleven, and I guess I
think about her sometimes, but I've never done anything."



   "I've molested two boys your age in the last few years," the adult said,
"and I let a friend of my dad's take my underpants off when I was
thirteen."

   "Did he take his off, too?" Jesse wondered aloud.

   "I did," his friend replied, "and we were swimming, too.  We both got
each other naked then stood on the bank of the pond with my forehead
against his chest as we looked down and watched each other get excited."

   "Did he talk to you?" the teen asked, "or did it just happen?"

   "The former," Leif noted, "but mostly - hint, hint - after we'd dried
off and had the fire going."

   "That doesn't sound so cool," the twerp noted wryly.  Leif's had been
gently stroking the child's lean flanks and Jesse moved his hands to the
molester, guiding him to the band of his briefs while raising his hips.

   "You're totally sure?" the adult asked.

   "More than that," was the reply.  And so it was done, one motion leading
by accord to another, until they were standing and wading free of the
water. A second outcropping sheltered the camper's fire, and a touch of a
lighter set it blazing as they quickly dried themselves, arranged a stick
for the wet garment, and then stood, the boy's head against the swimmer's
chest, their hands on each other's flanks, as they trained their eyes
downward, the heat of their gazes a sure cure for the common cold.  Several
minutes went by.

   "I think I'm getting one," Leif whispered.

   "Show me so I can feel it against my belly," the child responded in an
urgent but non-imperious whisper.

   "Neil, my dad's friend, and I did it a different way," the swimmer said,
"do you want me to show you?"

   "Yes," the boy nodded.

   "Okay," his friend said, removing his hands from the silken flanks of
the young teen and linking his fingers behind his neck, nodding to Jesse to
do the same thing.  The taller male leaned back against the natural rock
wall and began working his feet apart in order to spread his legs and lower
himself to the stripling's height.  The sight of the welcoming display in
the other overcame the final thermal issue and both males became quickly
erect, panting at the erotic sight, the adult, circumcised, growing to a
huge seven inches while his young friend matured at a slim and beautiful,
circumcised, five inches.



   "We touched this way," the hiker then whispered, thrusting his hips
gently to the youngster.  Jesse responded by moving until they were an inch
apart, the thought of the feeling of the taut glans of the handsome young
adult against the sensitive head of his own hard boner making his head
swim.

   "We stayed this way for several minutes," Leif continued, beginning to
pant openly at the proximity of the leggy colt.  "He did everything very
slowly and carefully with me."

   "Well," Jesse responded, "it's meant to ruin me for life so that's
probably a good idea."

   "The damnation factor," his friend observed, "it's all the herbs and
spices in a great barbecue recipe."

   "Plus, it's free," the boy, also panting, said, "even if you don't tithe
and do backslide, you get the message." It was a point two bright young
minds could have gnawed for an hour, but he touched him and both hissed
because they'd mated perfectly, tip aligned with tip so even wet and
slippery they were able to thrust firmly to each other, experimenting with
rhythms and pressures.  until one slipped against the other and the lithe
hundred pounder was in the arms of the six-three swimmer.  Leif turned the
boy back-to.  As his strong hands found the slim waist of the youngster,
Jesse rose to his tiptoes, arched, and welcomed his lover by linking his
finger behind the neck of the panting athlete.  The older male's hands took
the willing child, first low on his white belly, then straying up and over
the immature chest.

   "Have you started jerking off yet?" he whispered, preferring the
Americanism to "wanking."

   "No," Jesse whispered.



   "Would you like me to show you what it feels like?" was the next rasped
question.  The thirteen year old nodded.

   "This is how Neil started with me," the teacher explained, tracing his
fingers down the silken thighs of the adolescent, then fondling the
bone-hard shaft of his jutting penis.  Jesse hissed in response, trying to
restrain from bucking like a bronc and yelping like a dog.  "Just a little,
baby," his friend murmured, openly masturbating the boy with a dozen or
more purposeful strokes, then slowing and releasing as he turned the naked
youth to him, pulling him firmly by his waist as the boy's arms went around
him.

   "Do you want to experiment with kissing?" he asked.

   Jesse answered with his mouth, speechlessly, for what good would words
have done with such an array of fireworks so near at hand?  That took the
fight out of both partners, and they folded to the grass coming to rest on
their backs, boy's right leg over the adult's left, hands once again behind
their heads as they gazed up at the passing clouds at such times as they
were able to peel their eyes from each other.



   "It's not a rite of manhood and it's not a trip to the loo," Leif said.

   "It should be a right," his friend noted, "no kid should grow up without
it."

   "Well, I'm certainly glad I didn't," his friend added, "and when I get
out of school I'm going to teach and coach in a village.  In crude
vernacular, I'm going to see how many boys I can seduce and do my best to
run a sex club for all the kids; see how far the concept can be taken, and
if I don't run afoul of John Law, stay for my whole career so I can report
on how many former students bring me their sons and eventually grandsons,
or daughters, as it may be, as a benchmark for the success or failure of
the venture."

   "Wicked-izard," Jesse cooed, "and keep in touch so I can find a position
in the next town down the road."

   "Well," the man responded, "it sounds as if you have a darling of a
sister to begin with."

   "Alice is beautiful," the boy agreed.

   "Just don't, to borrow a military terms, go off half-cocked," the older
male advised the child, "be sure as you can be she's entirely ready for
you, also, that when it happens you have ample time and privacy for it to
really happen, so it doesn't end up furtive, quick, confusing, and
shameful, her belly all wet with your seed, and she not understanding what
happened.  In addition," he continued, "be very open about finding another
appropriate male for her.  Incest is best, but vice is nice, too, and if
the path is right for you, a comfortable and comfortably small group is
better than an isolated passage."



   "Are you going to get married?" the youngster asked.

   "I don' know," the adult answer, "I mean, yes, but I don't know when.  I
mean, there are two choices, aren't there?  Marry while young, then one's
children will attract others as potential victims of ravage and carnal
abuse, but it leaves one, at fifty, with an elderly mate.  Plan B would be
to wait until one WAS fifty, hoping for an adequate supply of young bodies
to tamper with and corrupt, then marrying a girl of minimum age, and thus
having a fresh supply of tender thighs and milky bodies for debauchment and
debasement."

   "Sounds like a plan," the child responded, happy to trade in American
lingo with his fellow traveler, Stateside.

   "Which?"

   "The latter," the boy said after a moment's pause.  "But maybe wait
`till your mid-fifties.  Then she'd still be young when you stepped out of
the picture, and presumably, having not been married all those years, and
having a head greater than even Master Brown's pumpkin, you'd leave her
comfortably off, so she could attract a young man as a reward for her time
spent with Father Time.  Mathematically, nothing else makes sense.  Get
married young, and you leave a lonely widow, too old for anything but more
tea, or you end up a widower, maybe for years, in the same nowhere
situation.  Bad formula.  If you used it on a bridge, it would break in the
middle because there'd be no overlapping of bearing members."

   "And how did you like your previous life Mr.  Shaw?" the university
undergraduate chuckled.

   "You're thinking of the scene where Eliza's father meets the professor,"
the boy replied.

   "Common sense rearing its head in Victorian Blighty," the man said.



   Though the location is some miles west of Inverness, the scene could be
set in Greece; adult and child discussing all matter of things while
committing unspeakable acts of perversion.  How did they ever let it
happen, these philosophical and inventive ancestors?  Tolerate the
loathsome as if it were elysian instead of degradation cursed from pulpit
and altar?  Were not boys to be whipped, chastised, humiliated and abused;
if taken, taken matter-of-factly in a toilet?  Wasn't that the proper
processing of the fiber of man?  One might almost think so, judging how
often it was the operative paradigm, and it was going to be a cold day in
many a hallowed hall when the brute nonsense of the system came to be seen,
like the emperor in his boxers, as fraud.  Of course, ye youth had to do
its part, stop acting like jerks and tying self-esteem to their dicks. 
Read more, play less, ever searching for an attractive guide or two along
the way.



   "I guess it amounts to a play of extremes," Leif said, "extreme
academics in their time.  Short, intense bouts of instructions with the
chairs wired with ten thousand volts, twenty minutes per, no questions, no
dithering, just get it or get belted across the ass, mixed with supervised
reading time, and a few hours a week, the great reward, unsupervised play
time, maybe for an entire night once a month or so."



   "The status-quo debased monarchy," the boy responded, "so changing it
might put Charles on the throne."

   "The constituency is huge," his friend added, "huge and world-wide, but
held in check by its perceived moral inferiority.  The very subset
individually responsible for bringing us from the mouth of the cave to the
eye of the tube is regarded as vermin by vermin.  Yet, things are so wrong
the way they are, so unredeemable fouled up, when a change does come, the
masses will look for the exact opposite of that which exists, and, if
history repeats itself, today's vermin will turn out to be insects called
lobsters."

   Packages don't come any neater than that and each nodded happily at the
wisdom of his mate.

   "I wonder if I'll be able to wait like this with Alice," Jesse said
after a long, comfortable silence.

   "Although you seem to pay dearly, moment by moment," his partner
responded, "waiting actually yields the world's most sensual dividend."

   "I'll try to explain that to her," quoth Jesse.

   "Just find things to talk about," the man suggested, "that's why I'm
going to electrify the chairs in my class.  Get kids reading to save their
fannies and when an interesting eventuality raises its head, it won't be
over in two minutes.  Instill math the same way, and lo and behold when the
victims grow up, all doors will be open and they'll have premium
opportunities to spread the good news far and wide, if they stay slim and
fit."



   "A revolution," the boy mused aloud, "only based on an alternate bodily
fluid."

   "Mucus from all the embarrassed clearing of throats," Leif said.

   "It is pretty that," his friend nodded, "the first time your hands went
down on my belly I would have turned red if I hadn't been so cold."

   "Then you better wait until January and sabotage the gas log," his
friend suggested, "you know, before anything happens with Alice."



   "Actually," the boy noted, "I picture the clergy flushed with anger and
the populace with pleasure at having a reason to act sane, eat sane, and be
as sane as the Greeks, or maybe even the ancient Egyptians who had no
concept of virginity."

   "The philosophical beauty of it is," the teacher mused aloud, "that we
can't do any worse.  No question of throwing the baby out with the bath
water, it's too fat and sick to keep."



   "Did Neil tell you about the first time something happened with him?"
Jesse asked after another affection and playful silence.

   "Yes," his friend said, "and massively dramatic it was, too."

   "Seeing you in our wee firth wasn't burnt liver in that department," the
boy responded.

   "Gracious words," Leif said, "thank you."

   "And...?" the boy intoned.

   "Well," his master whispered, "I have to know if you want to hear what
happened to him, all the details.  The biggest challenge, probably not the
right word, isn't getting a boy to be naked with you in a private place,
it's what to talk about.  Some like graphic stories with explicit scenes,
while others, even though they're avid for the physical part, don't want to
hear anything and especially anything specific."

   "But how would they know unless they listen?" Jesse wondered aloud.

   "Residual Calvinism," the teacher said, "inbred reticence overcome by
physical imperatives, but instilled deeply enough to prevent a full
engagement.  But its opposite is worse; no reticence; a boy who wants it
all at once, hot story, hot play, and on to the next."

   "Not many of those around," the young student observed, "I knew loads of
kids in Montana and a lot here, and none fit that profile."

   "You'll find them in the cities," his friend said, "twenty dollars for
ten minutes or something like that."

   "Is that what happened to Neil?" Jesse asked.

   "No," his friend said, "just the opposite, he became a social worker on
the hardball track, as they say in the States, working with the kind of
kids I'm talking about, which essentially means providing ad hoc relief, as
the overwhelming majority define lost-to-the-world.  In even a slightly
better world these children would be fair game for adults who wanted them
on any basis, because look what happens to them when no one intervenes. 
They'd go more-or-less directly from the home they're being thrown out of
to one where they're welcome.  But once they're on the street they become
atavistic with no ability to control immediate impulses, so if you try
taking them in they'll steal everything that isn't nailed down and book for
the sidewalks.  Altruists go in with cabin-boy dreams and come out with
bare shelves."

   "Best avoided any way you look at it," Jesse observed.

   "'Being thrown out?'" his friend recited, "'trade your youth and beauty
for comfort and companionship.' That should be a radio ad.  `Live in a
nowhere home, bad dad and worse mum?  Stay slim, stay fit, stay nice, and
we'll get you out.' That's another I'd try if I ran the show.

   "Who knows," the man went on, "it might even make our dreaded
English/Scots parents improve because if they didn't tune up their act, the
minutia would split by age ten."

   "And the relevant fluid could be tea," his young friend added, "as in
treat your kids absolutely beautifully on the chance they might stick
around to serve you a cup."



   "Neil got tea," Leif said, too excited to be amused by the instant
growth of the child's erection at the mention of his friend.

   "Tell me everything," the now rampant boy hissed.

   "It was a dark and stormy night," the man began, "and he'd broken one of
his oars persuading a shark not to eat his rowboat, thus losing control of
his way.  He did have a flashlight, and a passing training ship saw it and
hauled boy, boat, fifty pounds of flounders, and oar aboard.  That's how
the story begins."

   "It sounds long," Jesse whispered, his young-teen penis harder than
ever, his hips thrusting steadily against the leg of the athletic adult.

   "It is," his partner acknowledged, "there were thirty cadets and four
new, young mates aboard, in addition to which they were outbound for
Portugal and couldn't return for a kid who was healthy and out of harm's
way, so they radioed in and sailed on."

   "Epic," the child whispered.

   "Yes," his friend said, "and, if you like, you can have an opportunity
to perform a little self-analysis."

   "How?" the boy asked.

   "By letting it happen now, and seeing if you still want to hear Neil's
adventure.  One of my major themes as I go along; trying to dissect the
transient from the ingrained.  How do victims feel immediately after
cumming off?  Under what circumstances does excitement return and after how
long, if ever?"

   "We could go around and collect firewood if there's any delay," Jesse
noted.



   How many couples do you know who fed off each other's old-fashioned
practicality?



   "In case there is a big letdown," Leif said, "why don't you make it
happen with me first, then, if you ejaculate and lose interest I won't be
getting you all wet and sticky, which some kids find really gross."

   "I think I see what you mean," the thirteen year old responded.  "What
should I do?"

   "Kneel on my right leg while I keep my hands behind my head, then
experiment.  Do with me what you want me to do with you when you lie down,
the same thing I did with you for a little while your back was against my
chest."

   The lad might as well have been aboard an ocean going sailing vessel,
himself, with such alacrity did he respond to his senior's call.  (Nothing
to do with reefing, you sailors understand).  He moved and knelt in close,
bending to toy with the swimmer's heaving chest before moving his hands
down over the taut belly and to his wood erection.  As they'd experimented
with slicking each other with their clear seminal fluid on their first
homosexual encounter, so now Jesse continued the investigation with his
right hand, gently milking upward, and using his left to thoroughly wet his
mate, dizzy at how it would feel when he was supine and his powerful beauty
was touching him.



   At this point in Jesse's story all three of us spontaneously realized we
were overdressed for any conceivable outcome.  "Have you seen your sister
bare chested?" I asked the boy.

   "No," he said, "not since she was five or so."

   Further conversation was eliminated by a wide-eyed nod from Alice as she
moved to Jesse's lap, facing him.  Due to the up-to-now static tableau on
the sofa, I'd been taking most of it down, sound only, but now switched the
Canon to video, holding it in my right hand above the boy's left shoulder
and letting the auto focus do the rest.  His hands went to his sister's
cheeks, brushed her lips, where she refrained from any `lita-like response,
then traced down over her slender throat to the first button of her white
shirt.  "He'll see your tattoo," he said, opening his extreme in presents
and sliding the blouse from her shoulders.

   As if.  I'm ye pro, total concentration on subject `till ye job he done.
Total.  It was total while she was wearing her flimsy pink training bra.





   I'm going to bow out here, for the moment, due to file-size issues. 
I've tried to exercise any latent ability I might have at foreshadowing,
and don't mean to leave you all at sixes and sevens over whether or not I
have any talent in this regard, but we're over ten thousand words at a go,
and that's enough.

   Huge thanks, by the way, to all of you.  The numbers from ASSTR are
astounding, and especially those for succeeding chapters of "Photoplay."
Taken with my 25 titles on Nifty they translate into something approaching
eighty thousand a week, and, if files are counted, instead of titles,
perhaps five times that number.  Did I say thanks?

   Mark has waxed as First Correspondent, we seem to have some tech glitch
going, but are up to date once again.  D.H.  Lawrence is notable for
writing everyone he ever met, incessantly.  I see why.  It's fun to diverge
from the incomprehensibly difficult art of vivid fiction; like digging a
ditch in sand and then having a friend come along and take you for a walk
on the grass.  Same muscles, different activities.

   And, to return to the foreshadowing thing, I'm pretty sure this wee saga
has the best ending yet.

   Later,

   Film Fini - End File-1.

   xxx