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





   Truckin'-eh

   by Feather Touch

   (M/b, mast, oral, rom.)





   "Morality is for the affluent," I said, "and given a choice I think most
of us would choose to have children raised without so much as a salacious
thought or carnal experience of any kind until they fell madly in love with
a proper partner and married and lived happily ever after.  That's a golden
ideal.  No dating, no time wasted on romance or emotion on pursuit or
escape, no posing, no posturing, no finagling or stalking for eighteen or
twenty years.  That's my moral ideal and it's as common as salt, but only
as an ideal.  What really happens is perhaps one person in ten is handed
the fairy-book options, the combination of prosperity and parent and peer
involvement that amounts to a best-case scenario.  The rest of us have to
make it up as we go along.  Is that kind of how you feel?"

   "I guess I don't know how to feel, because I don't know what the
worst-case scenario is."



   His name was Johnny Lane.  He hadn't gone off with a tale of abuse or
misfortune or anything like that, but did seem to have something on his
mind.  I'd picked him up in what amounted the warming tail of a freakish
mid-September blizzard and spent the previous ten minutes trying to figure
out whether I should add or subtract years from his calendar.  On the one
hand, his mind was of not only an older teen, but a brilliant older teen.
His voice, however, pegged him as possibly as young as ten.  Since I'd
spent the night at Little America, the truck was cold soaked and Johnny had
remained buttoned up to the maximum until the heater began to kick in, so
there was a mostly brown lump of overcoat, collar, scarf, and hat; could
even have been a girl.



   As you might expect, I'd quizzed on home, family, and tried to keep it
short of the what-the-hell-are-you-doing-out-here routine, instinct telling
me he'd had enough (or he wouldn't be out here).



   "Have you got a step-father?" That was one of my first questions when he
hadn't just up and come out with a plausible story.  It had elicited a nod,
and I'd left it at that as we'd scampered over a list of favorite authors
and actually high-fived across the doghouse at the mention of a mutual
favorite.  He was both precise and pithy, criticizing our favorite for
writing a scene in which the narrator suggests that a woman should never
walk from her lover while wearing a scanty costume.  I'd never figured that
one out, either; what's a gal meant to do, back away from el buffo for the
rest of her life?

   "But you know, half the time he was probably right," Johnny peeped from
the shotgun seat, "they don't look so hot from the back." A mere minute or
two brought us to the conclusion the writer was half sexist and half man.



   "I don't like what he said about not inviting anyone of dubious
sexuality on a trip in his hero's boat," I said, "especially when another
of his principal characters is a devoted disciple of Keynes, who, I
suppose, wasn't dubious about being gay."

   Johnny hadn't said anything in response so I knew I was intruding, at
the same time he seemed worth intruding on.  I delivered my morality
speech, because something was cooking, I could tell by his body language.
The weather was breaking, the sun beating back the early storm, and his hat
and scarf came off.



   "Well," I replied, "the worse case I've read about is a young boy in
Chicago who wore four pairs of pajamas to bed every night hoping his father
wouldn't touch him."

   "It probably didn't do any good," my new friend said.



   "And he probably grew up like anyone else," I countered, "when I was
your age I had to eat half-cooked Brussels sprouts sitting in a pool of
cold water.  They used to make my stomach heave, but I choked them down and
never actually hurled.  You have to remember that ninety percent of the fun
of being an adult is not being a kid, anymore.  It's a hideous state of
life; school, for openers, then a minefield of alternatives from cigarettes
to being gang-banged by bikers and left for dead.  On top of this are the
morality plays with their theoretical perfection in a hypocritical and
deviant world, yet with many people playing by the rules, coloring inside
the lines, and making out just fine, so you can't say they're all lies and
nonsense."



   I wanted, a, to get him home, and, b, get him some safely.  At the same
time, it was a long run out to the coast - I was headed for Boeing - and
I'd be back through Wyoming in a week or so.  He was out and about when I
picked him up, so it was easy to rationalize any kidnapping or
inappropriate-interference aspect to the situation.  Hat and scarf off, he
was okay to look at, something that actually wasn't important because of
his bookish nature, but if someone's going to share the cab of a truck for
a week, well, it became a factor.  "What I'm going to do, if you want," I
said to Johnny, "is take a digital photo of you and send it to the sheriff
in Sheridan saying I've picked you up and giving him our itinerary.  If
anyone's burning up his wires with the hots for you, we'll be pulled over,
otherwise, we're covered - you're not running away and I'm not abducting
you."

   "That would be okay," the boy said after a moment's thought.

   "It's one gorgeous trip west," I said, "and running Wyoming in fresh
snow is not something you're likely to forget."



   I was being a little cute here, and it probably was exploitive or at
least manipulative.  I cued up Smetana's Moldau on the player, let the six
hundred horsepower Allis Chalmers run as it would, and we dove off a mesa
as the speedometer wound slowly past a hundred, and the dead cute part was
a long freight I'd seen in the mirror that was rushing through the snow a
quarter mile off to our right.  The instant we cleared the cut the engineer
saw the game was afoot and his six engines belched a ton of black smoke.  I
hit the Play button and the music crashed from eight speakers.  The race
was on.

   "Holy shit," Johnny remarked in an awed whisper, "I mean, ye gods and
little fishes." And there was a lot to try to fit into an exclamation, the
blue and sliver string of diesels unequalled as a snow dragon, now pegging
it at a hundred and ten, as we were.

   "Uh-oh," the sharp eyed kid said.

   He was right in his own way, a bear now discernable as a bear at half a
mile or so.

   "No one can blame this man," I quoted.



   "George at Willy's funeral," Johnny shot back, not adding "from `Death
of a Salesman', as we were already high-fiving over the doghouse.  The
distances and rate of closure looked right to me but I gave the boy a shrug
to be on the safe so.  My confidence in him didn't stem solely from the
grandeur of the picture, I would have trusted him in a less intense
situation, but it was nice to see him responding positively to the obvious,
which he did by grinning happily.

   I moved the truck into the passing line with its six inches of fresh
powder, and eased down to a hundred to let the freight pull a little ahead.
The tracks obligingly narrowed on the Interstate, so now our adversary
raced within a hundred yards of us.  The bear was doing about fifty as we
crashed by him, train on his right, semi on his very immediate left, both
blasting through the loose snow as if hell had long-since frozen.  I was
taken aback to see the cruiser spin out from the blast of the cabover, but
the bear took it in good stead.  I held my mike up to one of the speakers
to heighten his experience, ran the race (I think we might have won) for a
few more minutes, then settled back to the posted limit and the hardpack of
the traveling lane.



   "Don't ever try that if it's windy," I advised Johnny who still had a
happy smile on his cute face.

   "I don't think I'd try it on Salt Lake," the boy responded.

   "I guess it was kind of a morality play, itself," I said, "most of the
time you do what's right and proper and moral and descent and good, but
once in awhile you free yourself and take a chance.  The smokey could have
had a fight with his girl, could be a rookie out to establish himself,
could have just been reamed for this or that and have an attitude, and
wouldn't have been in the mood to be swung around, whatever the
circumstances, but we won out; he was an okay guy, liked the show, and
realized no one meant any harm."



   "I get it," Johnny responded, "and I'm glad there's no chance involved
in doing over a hundred miles an hour in six inches of snow."

   "That amount of snow being spun through the tires," I said, "gives them
a fair amount of grip, plus the fact they're spinning fast enough to clear
themselves by centrifugal force, so, with good rubber, it's not inherently
dangerous."

   "And sometimes it's good to just pretend a tire won't blow or an
antelope jump from behind a guard rail," the boy murmured (I'd lowered the
music) with a nod.

   "I'd prefer thinking in terms of having used up all our good luck for
the trip, so we'll be extra careful from now on." That seemed to hit a
positive note with Johnny and he nodded again, more enthusiastically.  By
now the train was pulling well ahead, still a thing of rushing, hurricane
beauty, and we sat back and watched, the "Moldau" at medium volume.  As the
interior came up to normal temperature Johnny kept shedding, folding his
discards neatly and placing them in the sleeper behind his seat.  He
emerged as a slim early teen, more interesting looking than what they call
eye candy.  To me the common ones are more intriguing than the cuties, but
that's just a matter of taste.  I also have a romantic notion of mind
coming before face or body, and here was a hand in spades.



   "So," I asked after a quiet half hour, "is it okay to quiz you about
gross and embarrassing stuff, or should we stick to subjects like does `A
Prayer for Owen Meany' have the silliest ending of any novel, or not?"

   "Yes and no," Johnny said, "yes it has a wacky ending, and no, I don't
mind if you ask me stuff about California politics."

   Well, I happen to like them - not that there has been a number that
would support a "them" - razor sharp.  I'd been off cable, even the
occasional weekends I got off it between trips, for over a year, the theory
being there was a finite amount of exposure to Israel endurable by the
healthy mind.  I kept up by logging onto MSN every day, always looking for
a piece titled: "Seven signs the jig is up," before branching off into the
absurd, so I had an idea what my new friend was talking about.



   "So many monkeys, so little money," I responded, often finding, as
evidently did my precocious friend, considerable gallows humor in the
folkways of the urban socialist.  Like Buster Keaton, I refrained from
laughing out loud - some people are so easily offended - but that didn't
detract from the merriment part and parcel of the theater of the
striving-to-be absurd, but, since O.J.  consigned to the realm of the
pathetic if not the outright desolate.  I mean, hadn't they voted for that?
The neutral gray of nonentity?  What, pray tell, did they want to replace
it with?  California beaches verged on gray, murky water, the rocks covered
with an algacic slime that seemed to suck all color from the world; what
were they thinking of?  It was no place for the slightest tint or most
subtle hue, never mind brilliance.  Not even a bright place, the slag heap
of the leftists, yet someone wanted to govern it.  Imagine.  Of course, on
the opposite coast the governor of Massachusetts' inbox was choked with
fourteen billion dollars in accounts payable to those working-class heroes,
the thirty-dollar-an-hour sandhogs, so it was good to be truckin' for grins
and dreamin' of leavin'.  See, I'm a pie-in-the-sky optimist by nature, and
heaven knows life has been good enough to me, but a prerequisite to being
positive or negative was being alive, in the first place, and remaining
amongst the quick didn't seem very likely in an atmosphere of ultra extreme
materialism.  Better to get a nice little Lund sixteen footer, rig it with
oars and a sail, and substance fish somewhere on the ample coasts of
Mexico, luxuries confined to a couple of steamer trunks full of books and
perhaps a friend who wouldn't burden the camp with futureless children.  I
know, optimism at a childish level, but what with the trawler-size diesel,
racing the thundering train, the friendly laugh of the trooper, the
Smetana, and the nice young hitchhiker, well, who wouldn't feel a little
upbeat?  Yes, it was the first day of the rest of my life.



   "I hope," I said after another comfortable pause, "you haven't been so
badly tampered with, tackled, abused, assaulted, molested, or raped, it's
an issue."

   "That's probably what you meant by `embarrassing' and `gross'," the boy
responded.

   "If it's worse than spelling `Schwarzenegger', feel free to skip it," I
advised the boy.

   "It seems more like a joke when I'm with you," the neat kid answered,
and I carefully - so they wouldn't spill - opened my cupboard reserved for
gold stars in order to add another.  By this time we'd reached another
major cross road and I pulled off.  It was not Middle America, but the
parking lot verged on what amounted to tundra at that time of year, vast
and sweeping to low hills, which would make an admirable background to a
few photos.  I continued slowing on the traffic-free off ramp, finally
pulling to the right and stopping.  I reached across the doghouse, grabbed
the ninety-pounder, and hauled him into my lap, showing him how to set the
axle button and move the shifter for first gear.  Tall boy.  He was able to
take my place on the clutch, and, with his overcoat retrieved from the
sleeper and placed under his butt, reach the pedals and see at the same
time.  Explaining how the very thought of an accident would put me off me
feed, I told him I'd meet him in the coffee shop, looped the strap of the
camera bag over my shoulder, and left the truck, assuming the parking brake
was plainly enough marked and obvious enough in function not to confuse the
boy.



   Can I pick `em, or what?  I hadn't walked fifty feet when I heard the
pop and hiss of the brake being applied.  As I continued up the artificial
grade there were a couple of experimental rumbles of the engine, then the
hiss of the releasing brake.  He almost stalled it once, slightly over
revved on the second try, and the third time I heard the normal sounds of a
thirty-five ton truck starting out from rest.  I hurried along in case
Johnny had the wit to find second gear, and he steamed slowly behind me as
I entered the front parking lot of the restaurant.  Realizing he'd probably
be smiling, I changed my course and jogged to where he was beginning to
back into an open parking slot.  I slowed to a walk to give the boy time
and readied the camera, vaguely tuned into the snorting of the truck as
Johnny experimented with moving the trailer (with its two fan-jet engines)
in the mirrors.  Easy, of course, if you just take your time while you're
getting used to it.  He did, so I had no trouble being there when he
dropped the left air window and, sure enough, smiled happily down at me.  I
got the shot and he reached in to set the brake and kill the engine.  We
took turns shooting each other, and, when he found out what the cargo was,
boy that he was, nothing would do but he un-tarp the big Pratt and Whitneys
so he could pose dramatically.  We used the tripod and self-timer to get a
couple of group shots, then I exchanged the camera bag for the laptop,
uploaded the images, got out the little snake of a battery-operated
printer, and left my friend to re-tarp our expensive load while I adjourned
to the coffee shop.



   "God, they're just beautiful," the thirteen year old whispered as he
moved into the booth beside me.

   "It's almost free to practice with a digital," I said, but they were
pretty good.  I rubbed his right thumb with ink and stuck it to the back of
a print, doing the same on one of the pictures he'd taken of me.  Since
cheek swabs are such a cinch, why not?  even though I felt pretty stupid,
and we smeared a little saliva beside our prints, then both signed our
names.  I didn't quiz Johnny about his provenance, but did include my
family brokerage (I'm from old money) as an always-current contact source.
I wrote a few paragraphs about what was happening and Johnny added a
crisply penned some lines about how so far he was having a good time.  We
signed again, stuck in four of the better pictures, and addressed the
envelope to Sheridan, because when the conductor asked where to put
Cheyenne, the stationmaster said: "Anywhere you want," and it didn't sound
like a trustworthy place, somehow.  I ticked my logbook and Johnny ordered
french toast with a grilled cheese back, rounding out his perfection in my
eyes.



   At that moment a bear entered the shop.  Tall, lean and sharp.  "Saw
your rig," he said, and placed a camcorder on the table.  Johnny looked up
attentively, but kept studying the menu.  I plugged the camera into the
laptop and the trooper pushed the Play button.  Pastoral wastelands without
limit came up on the screen, then, on the right, the smoking train
shouldering aside a ton of snow every few seconds, then an audible blast as
we passed, a dramatic fade-to-white, and a surreal kaleidoscope of imagery
ending with a long shot of train and truck disappearing in their twin
clouds of snow.  "I was wondering if I could dub the Smetana," the young
man asked.

   "It's not locked," I said, nodding in the direction of my Marmon, "can
we order you something?" He opted for grilled cheese and milk and headed
for the truck.

   "Did you copy it while it was playing?" Johnny asked.

   "Of course," I said, and we replayed the sequence four or five times
before the boy's order came.  Ned Jerris, for that's how he introduced
himself as he returned.  I explained we'd made a copy for our own use, but
he'd done the heavy lifting and had rights to the film as far as we were
concerned.  I gave him the unsealed envelope for Sheridan and he penned a
note on the paper, signing it over his badge number.  We took some video of
each other in the both, then settled down to eat.  Old money or not, I
hadn't had many mornings like that in my life.  Heck, it wasn't even
nine-thirty.



   "We keep getting off the subject," Johnny said once we were again
traversing the wastelands.

   "I guess I've been kind of devious," I admitted, "because I find you
attractive as a boy.  I am interested in what may have happened to you, but
my motive for asking is salacious, and I want to give you plenty of wiggle
room if that's not your cup of tea."

   "Have you ever experimented with a boy my age?" he asked.  By the way,
I'm thirty-two, slim, and okay looking.

   "Twice," I said, "but a long time ago.  To get the matter out of the
way, women find fault with me and I think I'm top molecule of cream in a
conical bottle, so that reduces that issue considerably."

   "They never fall for your modesty?" Johnny asked.

   "I don't know," I said, "I've tripled my inheritance with long-term
investments, and added half a million a year from a little franchise I
dreamed up, so to go around all awe-shucks, well, it just wouldn't be
right. If you have an ego, you can let people get closer than if you don't,
because your vanity, of and by itself, will prevent `closer' from becoming
`too close'.  Theoretically, this should yield enduring friendships which
don't end in maudlin regret when separation finally occurs."

   "It does keep things from being cut-and-dried, I can see that," Johnny
allowed.

   "Well, it's my own invention," the older male nodded, "tall tales that
turn out to be true tales, but you have to stick around to find that out.
So far, none have.  And driving a truck was meant to be the answer: a
good-bye to what is a very beautiful country in its western regions, and
maybe finding someone who wasn't all cocktail parties and country clubs,
which gets pretty industrial after awhile."

   "I guess I'm all library," the boy noted.

   "Proactively or reactively?" I asked.



   "I started spending more time there when he moved in with my mom," young
Mr.  Lane said, "but I was hooked in a week, especially on the magazines,
so it kind of saved my skin."

   "How big was the `p' in predator?" I asked, not loath to trying a little
soft-shoe syntax where it might keep things on a mild footing.

   "It was the `b' for `belly' that was the problem," Johnny replied.  "I
mean, I'm not a body-beautiful freak.  You don't have to be Rick Schroeder
to be my friend or anything, but there wouldn't even have been room for the
two of us in the shower, if I had wanted to, and that has to be a limit."

   "It's definitely my pet peeve," I responded.  "Obesity, even over
materialism, assuming it's not the ultimate form of the latter, in the
first place."

   "It's more like soggy cereal than material," the thirteen year old
added, and we high-five over the dog house, this time Johnny retaining my
right hand, and insisting he be dragged along with it as I brought it back
to it's proper place on the steering wheel.  He released his hold and lay
on his back, his hands linked behind his neck and his sneaker-shod feet
stretching into the shotgun seat.

   "But there was enough `p' that you ran away?" I asked, toying with his
hair for a moment here and there.

   "It was probably more Huck Finn type of stuff," the boy replied,
"running to, not from.  Yes, Nestor was after me, and yes, he really
strained the lock of my door one night, but, as you implied earlier, lots
of boys go through that and it doesn't make them walk like crabs or emit
phosphorescent vapors.  I mean, I guess it wouldn't have been any worse
than a marine biologist messing with a walrus, or a hospital orderly
dealing with fat patients, and probably wouldn't have been any big deal one
way or the other.  It was more an overall feeling of congestion.  Then you
start reading about boys who did split at young ages, and made out just
fine.  So, on balance, the risks and potential risks seemed about the same
whether I stayed or left, while at the same time it seemed realizing any
positive facet of the future likely meant hitting the road."



   "And your mom?" I asked.

   "She half suggested it," the boy laughed, "she ran away for two years
when she was only eleven.  She kept in touch and brought me home when she
was thirteen, then went back to school as if nothing had happened, except
she won every writing contest open to kids her age, as well as several for
adults.  She moved in with The Heap because he had ten thousand books in
his digs.  When she found out I had two reasons for spending so much time
at the library, she opened up on what a big world it was out there, and how
many nice people there were, and how few bad ones, when you got right down
to it, and further noted that for a boy an extended excursion over the
horizon was best attempted before he grew hair on his legs.  She said she'd
had the time of her life when she was on her own, but do send a continuous
stream of messages, because mothers like to worry.  Then she left a
thousand dollars under my pillow without actually giving it to me by way of
encouraging me."



   "She sounds like a keeper," I said, perhaps never having heard so much
common sense in so short a time.

   "Yeah," the boy agreed, "but there's also what you said when I first got
aboard.  You know, no dating or anything until you get married when you're
twenty.  I can't see that that would be too bad."

   "It would be great," I agreed, "so long as you, the male, remains
faultless.  Women are like acid, they eat relentlessly at any defect, and
the next thing you know, your soul leaks out and you catch hell for
spilling on the carpet." As noted, I'm a card-carrying optimist and so
didn't go on about the less metaphysical leaking often associated with
marriage.  Hell, he was old enough to read the papers.



   Now it did start to blow.  Warm.  From the south.  The remote
thermometer was inching its way past 25 degrees Fahrenheit.  "This may
sound a little convenient," I said to Johnny, "but it turns out the weather
forecast was wrong.  They said the North would continue until tomorrow, but
it's giving way, now.  That means winds and wet ice, and, not to put too
fine a point on it, shacking up, probably for a day, maybe for two."

   "Can we go back to Little America?" the boy asked.

   "Ah, yes," I replied, "a boy with a thousand dollars and a truck stop
with a roomful of arcade games."

   "A boy with two thousand dollars," he responded, "I had some money of my
own, and it never occurred to me they might have games there."

   "They have everything there," I said.



   "A pool?" he asked.

   "Sure," I replied.  "It's probably the most interesting resort in the
country.  We can kick back and at the same time be in tune with the pulse
of an industrialism that exceeds a factory-perfect Manhattan." Johnny
nodded up at me from his improvised bed and in less than forty minutes we
came to an overpass and were able to head back east, nursing along at about
fifty as the temperature kept climbing.  He rolled over on his stomach and
fell sound asleep.  I parked, registered, left him a key, and settled in,
having apparently completely rearranged my world without having
accomplished anything.

   His key clicked in the lock just before noon.  He said thanks for
letting him sleep, that he felt great, and disappeared into the bathroom.

   "A honeymoon on our first date," he chirped as he emerged, now dressed
in a tee and gym shorts taken from his backpack, and barefoot.



   "I've never been a bride before," I responded, and he thought that was
way funny.  For my part, what was "way" was that it was way nice to have
the issue laid to rest, as in assured, so I didn't end up having to play
creepy games, which I would not have wanted to play, but would have played,
as it's one thing to saunter the moral high road in the abstract and quite
another to walk the straight and narrow in the presence of a leggy thirteen
year old.  Meantime, the weather had turned to gusty rain.  We were lucky
to have the rig parked, a cozy room, and a menu of diversions at hand. 
Further cause for relaxation was the weatherman's now solid report of a new
high and a cold night ahead.  No place out there for a white man.  It was
hard not to feel a little smug, and, when Johnny chose to look through the
collection of paperbacks in my awol bag, instead of grabbing the remote
wired to the table between the beds, impossible.  He pulled out Clavell's
"Shogun".  "I just read this," he said, "and I mean it's a great story of
an Englishman succeeding in Japan, but there's a scene where a boy does
something with a man and the result is `clouds and rain.' I didn't get
that."

   Totally impossible.



   "Did you get a boner when you read it?" I asked.

   "Yes," Johnny whispered with a light blush.

   "Then you were on the right page," I responded, "and the description
will make sense to you one of these days."

   "Can you tell me more?" he wanted to know.

   "If you want," I said, "but it does bring the subject up again, The Heap
notwithstanding.  I've been mulling it over and it seems to me it boils
down to three choices.  The first is whether or not you're happy to go on
hanging out with me, or whether you might prefer to hang around the pool
and sauna and explore on your own."

   "With you," the boy said immediately.



   "Okay," I said, "that narrows it down to two.  Things that could happen
as and when you want them to here in the room, or we could go hang out in
the sauna, together.  This place is going to be packed to the rafters with
stranded truckers and motorists.  It is likely a holiday atmosphere will
ensue, for any other would be pointless.  An unrelated man and boy, both
reasonably attractive, together in the sauna, the steam room, and at the
pool are likely to attract attention, which could be quite open and
maturely expressed, especially in the steam room which allows semi-privacy.
Add to this that there won't be rooms for everybody, so any invitation we
might extend to a fellow traveler would likely be readily accepted.  In
short, there's the potential for many clouds and much rain, if you are up
for a full and satisfying entry into the nether world that's such a
distraction at your age if kept half secret and half hidden."

   "Cool," Johnny said, "as long as I can stay close to you."

   "I think the standard rule in such a situation," I explained, "is that
you owe two things.  First, a polite dismissal if your fancy leads you off
with someone else, and, second, a graphic description of what happens if
you do end up alone with someone else for awhile."

   "Don't just disappear," the boy rephrased, "and kiss and tell."



   "I can't think of any other," I said.  "The balance thing will assert
itself as it will.  I used to believe in nurture over nature, about ten to
one, but I've seen so many beautifully nurtured people amount to nothing,
and so many claw their way to success and fulfillment despite great odds,
I've come to view them as about fifty-fifty.  Yes, all Hottentots are
Hottentots, but in a complex culture kids are going to demonstrate what
they're really made of in a wide variety of ways, having more to do, I
believe, with their genetic makeup than with their upbringing.  This is the
long way of saying that you will find the level of your supposed instincts
whether it's truck-stop boy pussy or devoted husband."

   "We went out at a hundred," Johnny noted, "and came back at fifty.  Each
made sense at the time, though the first was certainly more engaging.  I
think I learned from the lesson."

   "I think you learned before the lesson," I responded.



   While he'd been napping I'd checked MSN to catch the latest on the
hurricane.  I'm kind of allergic to the reporting of these storms, having
twice partied far inside the red donut to light and variable winds, with
less than an inch of rain.  It's s simple sales tool; take a natural
vortex, speed it up a thousand times, then color it red and report the
winds at twenty-thousand feet, not actually saying they are winds aloft,
but instead comparing them to categories such as four and five.  Whoever
makes money off this marketing gimmick, interspersed with inflammatory
photos of Galveston, and the like, does so at the cost of enormous human
suffering, because evacuation is purely hell on the way away from home,
whatever the weather.  Well, we had a ruling class of notorious worry-worts
and something like a hurricane fit neatly into one of their worry boxes
(while obesity and materialism were hardly worth mentioning).  It was
jumped-up, whacked-out, and time to get out.



   Where had we gone hopelessly astray?  At the precise moment in history:
when Ford had been dumped for pardoning Nixon.  This affirmed our new
leadership's power to nitpick and destroy, but, simultaneously placed the
entire country in the delicious position of deserving what it got.  An
easily manipulated, disgruntled, subliterate citizenry, well, weren't they
but a toy one wouldn't mind breaking?  Silly Peanuts had won the ensuing
election and history had repeated itself when another good-ole boy had won
over a ninety-six percent approved president whom the Leadership held
responsible for a two percent rise from historically low (and
internationally laughable) levels of unemployment.  Two wrongs may not make
a right, but two jokes of this size will both inspire and sustain a comedy.
You bet I was feeling a little smug.



   "Do you want to watch them sell generators at Home Depot?" I asked the
boy sitting beside me on one of the beds, "or go adventuring."

   "I like talking to you," he answered.

   "Well," I responded, "it doesn't all have to be books and politics."

   "So you could tell me a little about the steam room?" the thirteen year
old asked, coloring.

   "You mean what it's like to be in a room with a dozen or two young guys
dressed in towels, and no females present?" I asked.

   "Is that true?" Johnny whispered nervously.

   "Not normally," I said, "on and average night you might meet a person or
two to chat with, and once in awhile a cute guy who wants to visit in your
room, and maybe once a month or so, and I'm extrapolating from anecdotal
evidence, a man and boy, probably not father and son.  But with the road
conditions, it will probably be very different."

   "Glad I got a nap," Johnny noted.

   "Well," I said, "if you want the good ship Future launched to a tumult
of popping champagne bottles, this is probably the best place you could
be."

   "This is the best place I could be," he responded, wriggling against me
to drive home the point.  And yes, it didn't help with the smugness issue.
He asked how many times I'd hung out in the steam room, and I said four
times in the last year, plus hearing some stories and most notably stories
concerning holiday traffic.

   "And this will be even better," he mused, then asked what we should
wear. Yes, he had trunks in his backpack, as I had in my luggage, and so
that's how we went, bath towels around our waists.  Bare chested, he was a
lithe beauty, his sinewy torso actually accented by his plainer but still
cute face with its conventional short, brown hair and eyes that were far
more intelligent than photogenic.  He had bigger, slightly stick out ears
and knobby knees; big feet.  He transcended cute by a country mile, an
actual masterpiece of provocatively gawkish hobbledehoy; Norman Rockwell,
couldn't have chosen better to represent a farm boy in overalls.  His
bathing trunks were just that; the modest, baggy style, nor did I, hairless
teen body notwithstanding, sport anything resembling a thong.  Just a
regular old bathing suit.



   I may have been dressed conservatively for the occasion, but it was a
lie.  Honest to god, I've never been half so excited in my life.  Al Gore
giving a graceful concession speech, outlining the vagaries of trying to
count two hundred million of anything, and standing firm to the precedent
set by Richard Nixon on the occasion of his highly suspicious loss to the
playboy, wouldn't have thrilled me as much as the sounds of the approaching
pool and Johnny's right hand instinctively finding my left.



   We passed an alcove for an ice machine and I pulled him in.  "There are
a lot of people there," I said, "so I want to be sure you know what you
want.

   "I just don't want to wake up," he said pinching one hand with the
other.

   "Well," I responded, "my knees are shaking and I've never had that
happen in a dream.  And this should be the more exciting because it's a
fickle-finger selection - just who happened to be in the area of the storm
- not like holidays when the semi-professionals are out stalking."

   "How can you tell who they are?" Johnny asked.

   "I don't know, exactly," I replied, "as this is essentially a first time
for me, but I would imagine they say too much, too fast and sound a little
too plausible."

   "Like the thugee?" he asked, and we high-fived in front of the ice
machine, then marched on.



   As a boy I was an indifferent hunter, confining myself to knocking an
occasional red squirrel out of a tree as a test of marksmanship, but never
experiencing anything approaching the thrill of the stalk and shot.  On the
door to the domed pool, there was a note.  "Do to weather emergency," it
said, "normal bathing-suit restrictions are lifted." It was signed: The
Management and someone had carefully penned in Top for The, and several
others had added exclamation marks.  The thrill of the hunt.  I suddenly
felt fully qualified to write a book on the subject, at the same time
knowing I was unable to write porn for its own sake.  In fact, the title of
anything I could actually set down would likely be "Beyond the Beacon", for
that's where we are.  The glow on horizon is now directly overhead, and the
ocean or desert ahead, take your choice, displays no others.  In common
terms, the beacon was lighted about 18880; this being a time when
technology, primarily steam and the telegraph began to influence the lives
of ordinary people on a daily basis.  For forty years, thereafter, there
was a string of fiery future lights, dozens of major points surrounded by a
glowing field of bonfires.  Not the slightest chance of getting lost.  But
we passed cars, roads, electricity, radio and television, finally homing on
a single source, the personal computer and Internet, at which we have
arrived.  For the first time in well over a century, and from an academic
standpoint, well over two centuries (dating from the first chronometer and
steam engines), there is not the vaguest trace of light on the horizon. 
Where the government should have, for example, been assiduously at work
getting fiber optic cable "the last mile", it dithered on socialism, so
this possible beacon is as far off as electric cars - invisible.  The glare
is all behind us; does its light pollution obscure a star or two?  I don't
think so.  I think there is nothing out there.  We have a hundred times
more than we ever expected; that which was barely conceivable twenty years
ago is now a commodity and of little future interest.  The syndrome can
even be measured by desperate-measures excesses exemplified by the Segway
power scooter; design for its own sake.  NASA is yet spending billions on a
space empire for the sake of a space empire.  Iridium pulled together
maximum credentialed brilliance from a hundred fields, none having the
remotest grasp of common sense.  These are all flags at the end of the
track.  The industrial and digital revolutions are over.  We'd better get
used to it.  To wandering in the dark, very likely to fall victim to those
who build fires for the sake of building fires, far different from the
beacons of Westinghouse, Ford, or Singer.  Now I know it's silly of me
going around pretending a writer has the answers, when that's my craft,
and, truth to tell, I don't look it that way.  I think what a writer knows
is the pitfalls and crags of history; how inclusive and merciless political
and religious insanity can turn into whirlwinds, and, in our mega-complex
present state of being, how such formerly regional disturbances could now
throw the entire mechanism out of kilter without the ballast of a large
agrarian population.  This heightened awareness of danger and calamity
inspires a passion for alternatives, and though the writer is a mere
writer, and not some kind of giant utopian-web spinning spider, he feels he
should not comment, leaving it for others to pull their heads out of the
sand, take a look around, and react.  Ideally, these would be the elected
representatives of the populace action conscientiously for the goals of the
general public, but you can't even type out a statement like that without
coming off as sarcastic or pathetic.  So it becomes a default issue.  Your
duty is to inform the bridge, not steer the ship, but you notice no one
else is on the bridge, and, if luck is with you, when you swing the wheel
to the right, the ship will turn to the right, just like your car does, so,
hallooing to be sure no one's dozing in the chart room, you take the wheel
and resume the course while you figure out what's going on.  Our course
should be a political marriage with China, to the extent our official
national title becomes: Emersonia, First State of China, and China's
official name becomes: China, First State of Emersonia.  This becomes the
beacon, and there are others listed in other writings.  Otherwise, it's
dark and dangerous and the chance of survival, as any real desert wanderer
or ocean drifter could tell you, amounts to zero.



   I'm quite happily writing this to myself.  I've done Nifty for 1.2
million words; that seems like enough.  David didn't acknowledge my last
submission "The Last Farewell" which I assume means he wasn't interested,
likely because it had a long discourse on colonialism, plus it may have
been lighter on the sex than my usual work.  In any event it either brings
to a close or represents a hiatus in the most significant literary
amalgamation in history.  This amounts to great writer, huge archive, and,
while it would be nice to have a "thanks, but no more" note, that would be
gilding a most extraordinary lily.  To start from zero in published
fiction, and in less than three years become the most widely read new
writer of a generation, not because of some colossal fluke effort like
"Frankenstein" but through an accumulation of two dozen titles is a
singular achievement.  The tortoise and the hare.  It could have naught but
a brilliant ending, and it, at the end, I drive off the lot like Spencer
Tracy (he was an s.o.b.  over contracts and technicalities), with the
barest wave from the security guard, well, that's how I drive off the lot.



   How sad for writers to need to be popular, Mr.  King, et al, who do it
for money and recognition.  Not the milieu of the artist, not by a million
miles.  David has been extraordinarily flexible and tolerant, even allowing
me to publish his e-mails without permission; in fact, has eliminated but a
single sentence in a huge pile of manuscript.  But even this becomes a
trap, because I nurse no frustrations (beacons, if you will) over things I
haven't said, been unallowed to say; trapped, because the willful child has
been given his head at all junctures.  In other words, the slate is wiped
flawlessly clean.  No residual issues, and, far from regrets, a level of
satisfaction that goes: did I really do that?  like some diligent Alger
character.  Leaving what else to do?  Isn't the fate of the willful child
to have nothing in reserve?  Nothing he hasn't been allowed to do?  No
looking back to say "what if" or "if only".  No looking forward, either: "I
need to, I should, I ought to, I want to, or even, I don't want to.



   It can't have happened to too many.  A handful of entrepreneurs, mostly
of recent vintage, who ended up, with no heroic struggle on their part,
emperors of vast industrial kingdoms, having surpassed by an unlimited
number of times what was expected of them or what they expected of or even
dreamed of themselves.  In the world of art, the competition, to use a
simple word, exists not at all.  Nothing great is being turned out by
anybody, and when the subject is writing, nothing that is even good.  Where
the King of Biff was "The Greatest" I end up being "The Only".  I tower
oppositely.  Others are boosted by their egos, mine bends me.  Ego gets
lost in a Dostoyevsky or Faulkner, they were miserable round-and-round;
mine stands out like a sore thumb because it is my only defect.  I fail
perfection only to the extent of three-quarters of a pack of cigarettes a
day, and two U.S.  dollars worth of marijuana.  I, for example, keep my
hands off my underage girlfriend when I could easily tie her in place with
a little financial extortion (seeing as how I'm sole supporter her entire
family).  It doesn't happen.  I gamble no dollar, consume no pint, chase no
skirt, and dally, more than once in awhile, a little bit, with no boy. 
Colorless.  A grinding scribe.  Only being the greatest who ever lived to
separate me from the masses, and leave me a little nonplussed over how I
should act, in light of this, because there is no one to teach me.  By the
same token, there is no one to teach; as far as I can see, no one capable
of learning ten percent.  I suppose this is some kind of default mechanism
at play; lacking anyone with whom to engage (I mean, they can't even find
anyone to replace those old sopchowders Mailer, Bellow, and Updike) the
most sensible option seems to be quietly tell the truth; just plunk the
puppy down in black and white.



   Is Total Success to be counted among the hazards faced by those who get
what they wish for?  Does it completely stall the psychic processes?  I've
done so much I don't have to do any more.  Shouldn't that attitude, if you
ever attain it at all, come in the mid-seventies?  Is that why some artist
develop opulent lifestyles: because it keeps them producing to pay the
thick stacks of bills?  That works against my general theory of the artist,
and that is that he must be too lazy to produce anything but his absolute
best.  And there is another bug in the formula: adhering to the doctrine
yields a simple lifestyle, in so many words, a modest lifestyle, and
modesty breeds popularity, and it may be possible to think of a bigger
waste of time than popularity, but I can't do it.  So, to repeat, it's a
sad life for the commercial boys: producing what others want and making
popular.  No place for an artist.



   While I'm thinking in terms of trying a stint at ASSTR, my
self-indulgent whining over having done-it-all, notwithstanding, I do
approach with some caution.  They recently sent a note to writers (I have
one story, "Jimmy and Frogger" on the archive, posted in Dec.  of 2000, and
so am on the mailing list), promoting a contest for anniversary stories. 
There was a link to artwork that was suggested for story themes, so I
clicked it.  It turned out to be a commercial site for some guy hawking
what was probably rejected Playboy material, drawings of luscious lovelies
no more alternative than boo.  What has impressed me is the high level of
readership of "Jimmy and Fogger" (usually over 500 a week, after nearly
three years.  In fact, I use that readership to gauge my overall downloads,
which I peg and 15 to 20 thousand a week).  Now, whether or not they can
tolerate the "political stuff" is another matter.  I won't write porn
without it, because someone else has already been there and done that.



   I frequently write to other writers in various essays, and usually in
very negative terms.  I slipped into it under complex circumstances, and,
though I have had the opportunity and the tools to develop my skills beyond
those of any other, it's an accomplishment only satisfying in its own
right. No one, for example, has ever written to say, hey, I like your
dialogue, if you can pep up this screenplay I'm working on, I'll send you
ten grand.  In other words, you can excel to your heat's content, and
you'll be shrugged off, even by your editor, as if you didn't exist.  How
do you react?  You mumble a quick prayer of thanks for the time thus freed
up and keep working.  You know things about yourself, at this level, no one
can tell you and no one has to tell you.  For example, your iron grasp on
immortality.  Who remembers the emperors and bishops, the kings and popes?
But we all remember Mozart.  And not only to work at that level, but to be
able to tell of yourself and your art as you do so.  No other artist can;
his work is everything, his life and thoughts only of interest to scholars
and aficionados.  Whereas the writer gets to even tell what he's not
thinking.  If he doesn't think civilization can exist much longer on its
present course, he can say so.  If he doesn't think it's worth saving, he
can not only say so but do so in mocking and derisive terminology, getting
a hell of a kick out of the kicking.  It's the world's only unlimited
license, being a writer; more specifically, being a pornographer.  A
thirteen year old boy in white, cotton underpants is the most tantalizingly
beautiful of natural or unnatural creations; such a bait the readerfish
will swim in pursuit through a maelstrom of rapids and churning boulders;
over falls and through stagnant pools, imbuing the writer with tacit
permission to say everything and anything he wishes, beat and bruise as he
will, so long as that glimmer of white flashes within possible reach.  All
of which is a polite way to say I've outdone myself with this little
Truckin' script, having the inexperienced schoolboy at the very door of a
"rules-off" pool of a rainy afternoon, an unrestricted license (seeing as
how thrilling is more engaging, in our common era, than killing).



   The search for something nice to say.  Trying to keep it from becoming a
frustration.  Knowing, at heart, you're happily optimistic, yet being
unable to look in any direction and find the least sign of positive
activity or anything to be optimistic about.  How thin is this ice?  Well,
in "Slate Magazine" (on the MSN browser) the Segway makes an appearance, a
small group and a writer trying them out in Paris.  Now, I've written this
device off as symbolic of the end of the Industrial and Technological
Revolutions; of a vehicle built because the gyroscopes and sensors make it
possible, not because it might serve a useful purpose.  And here is the
machine rolling around in Paris.  It would be nice to be wrong about this,
to have erroneously dismissed the transporter as ludicrously dangerous and
overtly impractical, and find it, after all, at least a glimmer of light on
the vacant horizon: sales in the tens of millions, a virtual new paradigm
of the magic carpet variety - step and scoot - and an industrial engine
kicking in just as personal computers are descending through appliance to
commodity.  Oddly, I could make great use of a Segway.  I live two miles
from town and am pretty well crippled up by chronic phlebitis, making
walking more of a chore than even the burden of a lazy nature would have
it. Tilt and go.  Tilt and return.  Tilt to the store and test the gyros
and logic chips by tilting, tilting, and seeing if it would get me home all
nice and stable and upright.  So, on this one, I'll hope I'm wrong.  Yes, I
still have great concern over the safety of the machine; it's unavoidable
capacity to slam you down on your face, your legs trapped between the big
wheels, at the slightest miscue, but maybe that just doesn't happen very
often.  I worry about it as a tripping hazard, its handle parallel to the
floor in its stored condition, but maybe it has some sort of kickstand so
it can be parked in a vertical position.  As "It" the Segway was hyped as,
a, having a revolutionary new power source (hydrogen was hinted at) to give
is useful range, and, b, that it would be able to climb scares.  What has
emerged is a side-by-side wheels scooter with the short range typical of
battery-powered devices, and the only way it would handle a staircase would
be to launch the rider bodily half-way up.



   Continuing on, Amazon has several pages of info that seem to put the
transporter in a maybe category.  Five thousand dollars is something of a
barrier, but a good power wheelchair probably costs about the same.  It
does seem to have a kick stand, which is good news.  The sensors, motors,
and gear train are perhaps more than incremental advances and may turn out
to have other applications.  The safety aspect is addressed, you have to
take a rider course before you take delivery, while the various writers
deem in easy and intuitive; hard to do wrong.  Damn, it would be nice to be
wrong about something.  With obesity, materialism, and socialism putting us
down for the count, it would be nice the see a product I deem highly
dangerous if used en-masse take off and become the very something-out-there
I claim does not exist.  Amazon, it should be noted, does not stock them or
offer delivery, perhaps a position on a list.  This brings back memories of
the BD-5, a one seat rocket of a light aircraft supposedly able to cruise
at nearly three hundred miles an hour on a snowmobile engine.  As I recall,
a few advanced hobbyists were able to make their kits fly, but the machine
never approached commercial distribution.  So, for once, I'm hedging my
bets, letting one optimistic puppy out of the kennel.  I do not go so far
as predicting success, I mean a basic principle of walking is leaving
nothing behind you, and thousands of people arriving anywhere, and leaving
something behind them, has philosophical ramifications akin to occupying
two places at one time and engenders nightmares of one more vehicle to
park. A forest of bicycles is, for example, one thing, they're probably
worth, on average, a hundred dollars each.  But a forest of easily-carried
machines worth several thousand dollars apiece?  I mean, isn't that almost
funny?  Its carrying capacity is limited to 250 pounds, severely limiting
its appeal to those who need it most, but this is obviously revisable in
future models.  One thing it's hard to tall about at this point, is
comfort. I once spent ten minutes in the kitchen of a fellow who lived in
an ancient house with 5'10'' ceilings, and even having to bend-over but an
inch was extremely tiring and uncomfortable.  If you have to ride the thing
bent forward, you'll be hearing from your back if you use it much.  And
this need not be a sales issue.  The big motorcycle makers sell huge
numbers of street-legal racing bikes, whereon the rider holds his legs in a
position of tortuous discomfort in order to look cool.



   An essential characteristic of something new is its ability to inspire
the poet.  Here the transporter becomes almost exciting, for, as AOL was
built on the proclivities of the pedophile, so is this option open to the
Segway.  "Sunday in the Park with Seg".  Why doesn't it practically write
itself; the magnetic appeal to bright eye children?  Teaching this or that
favorite as you might teach archery?  Inviting the brightest of the bright
or cutest of the cute, depending, again, on proclivity, home for advanced
lessons?  In other words, are we to be, once again, the heroes and salvers
of humanity as we were with our monasteries, with our going down to the sea
in ships (in search of likely middies), and our avid support of the nuclear
Internet as it transitioned from government and industry to the subdivision
and den.  For me, this is going to be an ego nightmare.  Already ranking
among top Web contributors, if not defining number one am I now to be faced
with an additional major contribution though the mechanism of a series of
Segway-based stories, leaving little doubt as to the attractive power of
the machine in urban, suburban, and rural environments?



   As veteran readers from over Nifty way know, I'm an artist-king; long
list of stove-bolt credentials.  I'll delay dithering on provenance, it's
all out there, somewhere, but, rather, cut to the chase by saying if I were
and empowered king, rather than court jester, I'd emulate about the only
thing I've ever heard good about the French.  Specifically, the government
bought the patents of the early photographer, Daguerre, paying him
handsomely with a lifetime annuity, and distributed Daguerre's patents
without restriction.  I'd do the same with the Segway.  Buy the patents an
a plump price, and let the markets bring the price down to the six or eight
hundred dollars the machine is actually worth.  In other words, the profile
is identical to personal computers and the Net.  Pedophiles to get things
rolling, a thing they can do since they are wealthier and smarter than the
public at large, then crash the price with clones.  Sales goal, twenty
million units in six years.



   As a prolific inventor, myself, I do have one specific suggestion.  A
battery strap (or belt).  This could be worn around the waist or suspended
from a point on the steering column; and would simply be plugged in to add
considerable power and range and, also, to allow a convenient way to carry
the batteries to and from a charging location that is removed from the
location of the parked machine.  Taking this a step further, would be a
backpack mounted battery, a unit which could weight ten or fifteen pounds
(with room in the pack for luggage).  One additional step and we have a
storm suit with a number of battery packs both to keep the rider warm, and
power his machine.  So, machine, battery belt, and backpack, and you'd have
a fifty mile range, plus great flexibility when it came to re-charging.



   I'll do my bit in future stories - leave out the politics and ego
tripping, but I think Segway would be smart, you know, just to help out, if
they'd take a high road on advertising, emphasizing the fashion over the
engineering; for example, an appealing male model showing it to preppy kid
(like Mazda's zoom-zoom boy) in Central Park.  "GQ", that kind of deal. 
One generation had the Gibson girl, another the Marlboro man, and in my
mind it's time for the Segway Boy, complete with licensed tee shirt.



   Additionally, there's hacking and tricking.  Not that it would ever be
capable of a wheelie, but say a little gas-powered two-stroke running a
generator that would hop the voltage up from 72 to about 150 with a top
speed of about thirty miles and hour.  This leads to racing and competition
which would be several steps ahead of existing robotic warrior events.  At
the high-voltage end, how about a pantograph that connects the machine to
overhead wires like an electric bus or dodge-em cars, for drag racing.



   Do we all see how this is the key?  Marketing strategy over vibrating
gyro design?  Maintaining a high profit profile while serving the affluent
and savvy perv market, then rolling the extra loot into getting the price
down?  It isn't shooting fish in a barrel, but it could work, it could be a
reprise of the Model T.  All it has to do is inspire the poet in all of us.



   In sum, it is more than a collection of off-the-self gizmos tricked up
to make a gadget, as I once alluded.  Sorry.  Good stuff, and, while
Amazon's boldly stated refusal to ship anywhere outside the U.S.  is a
predictable drag, I'll keep my eyes open and hope the puppy makes it across
all eight lanes of freeway traffic before he decides to turn around and
come home.  Meantime, even as a non-owner, I'm a beneficiary by dint of
having reached a point in my writing where I stall out unless I'm thinking
two stories ahead, thus finding the inspiration to finish the one I'm on.





   I pushed the door open for the boy.  "Minnows," was his first word,
whispered excitedly.  Having read Clavell, myself, I knew my young teen
beauty was referring to a number of boys ages six to eight, the likes of
whom, in a previous age, had graced the bathing pools of the Sumari, their
lithe, fishlike bodies undoubtedly adding to the attraction of a more
mature male partner.  Cute minnows, and apparently a whole Cub Scout troop
of them.

   A security guard got our attention as we entered the noisy den. 
"Begging your pardon, gov'nor," he said in a real British accent, "all the
bars will be closed for the duration, and we request any overt activities
be confined to the sauna and the steam bath." Sometimes top management can
be defined in a well spoken sentence.  I nodded our thanks and handed him a
hundred dollar bill, realizing, as I did so, if the world were an excellent
place, I'd be one broke dude.



   We took our bearings.  I'm too old to yip with excitement, and Johnny
too inexperienced.  The group was for the most part male and was an
interesting display of natural selection at work.  By this I mean birds of
a feather flocked together, the huskier and older in one area, grading to
the cub cuties splashing in the shallow end.  There was no nudity, and half
the swimmers appeared to be in swimming togs of one kind or another, while
the other half wore either underwear or cut-offs.  Displaying was similarly
restrained, perhaps half a dozen of the younger men being pretty open with
their child partners, anyway, enough to tell, but no open fondling or bad
touching.  The minnows thought my fish was the cat's meow, so I stole his
towel, grabbed him by the elbows, swung him in three tight circles, and
launched him into the middle of the yelping scouts in an attempt to break
the ice.  He tucked into a neat cannonball while airborne, and that was it
for the cold stuff.  I was begged, beseeched and implored to repeat my
performance by a tribe of sixty pounders, and did my best, powerful glad
when their two male leaders came to spell me.  In the water, the kids were
all over both of us, all of them.  I don't know if I was reverse
engineering my theory on juvenile sexuality, at the time, or not, but my
theory has it ALL boys gently introduced in friendly circumstances, exactly
such as a pool, will to only happily yield, but happily lead if they know
what will happen.  There were no hangers-back, no wall flower, the entire
dozen were all over the two of us, and the tighter and more openly we
hugged this child or that, to a boy, the more enthusiastically they
wriggled and the more avidly they returned for more.  Fortunately, they'd
also developed a new interest in their two attractive young leaders and it
almost seemed as if the two twenty-somethings in charge were learning a
thing or two about prepubescent male children, at the same time.  What
began to seem strange and improper was the thought that, under ordinary
circumstances, we would NOT end up in private and naked with the
youngsters. Downright weird.  But, of course, not the case or I'd hardly be
going on and on about Mickey, Stan, Renaldo, and their younger troop mates.




   After awhile, our energy levels waned and we sat along a wall at the
shallow end, Mitch and Hal, the leaders beside Johnny and me, the scouts
gathered in front of us, backs against our knees as they seemed interested
in looking in the same direction as the big folk, and that was toward the
doors to the men's steam room and sauna about fifty feet away.  What I said
before about the thrill of the hunt?  Forget it.  Thrills are for roller
coasters and fireworks.  This was nothing like that.  Way too cheap.  Nine
year old Renaldo for example, a shyer golden Hispanic with raven hair, huge
brown eyes, and a smile that could best be described as insatiable, because
it would be impossible to get enough of it, and touching him inside his
bathing suit, first in back, then, when he gave permission by turning, in
front, then peeling him naked, why that wouldn't cost a cent, on the one
hand, and was so obvious an attraction, on the other, that it was cheap and
common as dirt.  He was seated against Johnny's knees, and I was aware of
my guest's muscles flexing almost imperceptibly as he returned the subtle
pressures of the boy in the water.



   The routine at the twin doors of the spa facilities seemed settled and
organized.  The males would strip modestly out of their suits, underwear,
or shorts, under their towels, hang the wet garments on the provided hooks,
and enter.  Again the Darwinian thing kicked in, a group of second string,
i.e.,, bigger and older, exited together, and what that probably meant did
nothing to attenuate the rising tension in all of us.  All that was needed
to light the powder was a spark, and we were rewarded with a pair, an
athletic swimmer looking about twenty five and a lean, willowy boy about
sixteen.  They whispered together for a few moments at the door to the
steam room, then they boy removed his underpants as his partner steadied
him with his hands, the younger male moving subtly against his friend as
the older male got naked under his towel.  A moment before they swung open
the door, they turned and looked directly at the group of us, looked into
the room, then turned and looked at us again, nodding imperceptibly.  The
boys against both my knees wriggled, pushing back as hard as they could,
and, to sum up, twelve out of twelve, plus two leaders, and not a dissenter
in the pack.



   "We really should say something to them," the older leader, Mitch said.
"It's not something it would be good to be wrong about." He looked at me as
if cueing me, and, in truth, I was sort of senior guy present, so I decided
to help out if I could.

   "Boys," I said, "do you all want to go into the steam room?"

   They nodded as one.

   "Okay," I responded, "you can, but we have to talk for a few minutes
first." Again, they nodded.



   "It may be pretty graphic and explicit in there," I began, "things
you've read about or heard about or seen in pictures actually happening in
the absence of females.  Do you get the picture?" Yes, they all whispered.
"And you know the door's not locked, there are no guards, and no one's
going to think thing-one about you if it's not your cup of tea and you want
to leave, okay?" Nods.  I'm a great believer in anticipation, the wish
about half the time exceeding the reality, so I prolonged my role as ad hoc
master of ceremonies.  "Boys," I continued, "do any of you know what's
going to happen after we leave our bathing suits on the pegs and go
inside?"



   Two boys raised their hands.

   "Do you know from experience?" I quizzed, not having to let my voice get
a little husky, for it did so automatically.

   "From experience," they both whispered.

   "So you know what the man we just saw is going to do with the boy when
we go in to watch them?" I then asked, and they both nodded.

   "Is there any reason you can think of," I said, "based on your
experience, that any of your friends shouldn't go in with us?" To this they
both shook their heads, an immediate No.



   "When you got molested," I went on, "was there semen involved?  Did you
get sperm on you?" Here they both nodded.  "Okay," I added, "that's the
last thing I wanted to warn you guys about.  It's one thing to fantasize
and even to watch, but it can be different when a young adult starts
cumming all over your chest or on your lips or your penis.  If you're ready
for it, you'll probably like it, but, when you get older and are teaching
boys, in your turns, be careful, because it can be really gross for a kid
who isn't prepared.  Okay?" There may be something more exciting running
around loose than twelve nascent pedophiles nodding thoughtfully, but I'm
doing the best I can with what I have to work with.  As far as I could see,
there was no possibility of any place in the world offering a higher high
than this pool and spa in the middle of Wyoming.  It beggared the poor old
language.  Yes, the artists got away with it, especially the religious
dudes, with their portraits of biblical figures all arched in sinewy
display, but the writing crowd got short shrift.  Instead of millions of
colors, and infinite varieties of shape and form, we get a few dozen words,
most of them of now use at all in describing what was to happen beyond the
frosted glass door leading into the steam room, the self-same room as had
now six pairs of underpants, all looking pretty small, and two swimsuits
hanging on the adjoining wall.



   To have walked in, alone, would be to challenge every skill of the
scrivener; to do so with a coltish thirteen year old, two attractive young
scout leaders, and a dozen Cub Scouts, all nicely indoctrinated and
desensitized, well, the language just gives out.



   "One last last statement," I said as we began standing.  "Besides
getting semen on your bodies, you can get it in your mouths.  The fluid is
heavy, salty, and cloying, especially in adults, so if you're interested at
all, ease into it and don't count on an older male being able to warn you
when he cums.  Okay?" If there's anything cuter than minnows it's agreeable
children and their syncopated nods were beyond music.  We emerged from the
pool, found our various towels and spent a minute drying off a little and
wrapping the towels around our waists, then headed for the steamed-up door.
It would have been nice to have more privacy as I would love to have
molested Johnny a little while I reached up under his towel to get him
naked, but, as you might expect, every eye on the place was on us, so any
funny business was out.



   Yes, we could have been a Sunday school outing changing into cress
costumes, neat towels, quick motions, all so matter of fact it hardly
warrants description.  I opened the door for the tribe and they entered
Jonah, the steam room (the dry sauna was Ahab).  The lower benches were
white tile, the upper, teak.  The room was maybe twenty feet by six, the
seats separated by enough of an alley to allow movement but close enough
that it would be possible for adults, sitting forward, to touch knees.  The
upper wooden benches were low, at shoulder height when sitting and
comfortable to lean against.  The interior was free-form and cave-like,
rather than geometric and clinical, softly bathed in flattering light.  It
was steamy and warm, but not oppressive.  But it this way, if god's done
half such a job with heaven, the chosen are finally in for a treat.

   "Hi," everyone said nervously, half struck dumb by a reality beyond
comprehension.  The four we hadn't seen turned out to be a thirty year old
uncle, his nephew, Todd, Johnny's age, and his two best friends, also
thirteen.  Jeff and Neil were the man and boy couple who'd nodded to us,
and that was an inventory of the cave dwellers.  Once again, everyone
looked to me as the oldest, and, since I had no one to look up to, I did
the best I could.



   "Two of the boys with us," I began, nodding at Mitch and Hal, "have done
secret things with older males, so maybe they'd like to tell us a little
about what happened." If I say so myself, it was just the right touch,
because I don't think any of us wanted to go rostering off like
cheap-thrills lowlifes, while just sitting staring at each other and the
big tents in all the towels would have been uncomfortable after awhile. 
"And," I went on, sensing permission from my audience, "while I'm sure
their stories are exciting, it would probably add to the sense of occasion
if we were to drop our towels, fold them, and sit on them.  Allowing time
for a nod of approval, I wobbled to my feet, took a deep breath, and led my
tribe, my circumcised seven inches feeling about twice as hard as anything
I'd experienced, freaking ever.  We followed by age, and in a minute were
all naked, staring at each other, and obviously ready for the soprano voice
of an eight year old telling about his first time alone with a mature male.
The two boys who'd acknowledged having been manhandled looked at each
other, the older, his name was Tim, accepting the honor of going first. 
Instinctively, the boy seated himself in the lap of Hal, the younger scout
leader, and, as the man's arms went around him, began his story, his voice
a sensual combination of squeaks and whispers.



   "We were on a long drive," he said, "my art teacher and I, taking some
pictures of his to a state exhibition.  A few days before, in my regular
class, the teacher suddenly got very nervous one afternoon and said she had
to teach us some special things.  We'd heard rumors about `the dolls', so
we got nervous, too.  Anyway, she gave us the lecture and showed us the
anatomically correct - at least I learned how to pronounce it - boy and
girl.  It didn't get less embarrassing," the boy went on, "but it did
stop."



   He paused for a moment, and we all shuffled around getting comfortable
and nodding for Tim to continue.  By this time, I had Johnny in my lap, and
he had Renaldo in his.  We kept our hands on each other's flanks and tried
not to wriggle too much, afraid that Tim might take it as impatience with
his story.



   "My art teacher's name was George and I asked him why Miss Ireland had
gotten so nervous," the eight year old said, "and he said that he had a
different opinion on that than most people, but that it, his opinion, was
very mature and he shouldn't talk about it with a boy my age, because it
was gross to some kids, and others just weren't ready for it.

   "I sensed he wasn't being evasive or tempting me with reverse
psychology, he wasn't that type, but rather that it was serious and he'd
tell me if I was serious about wanting to know, and would be willing to
accept a lot more than the demeanor of one teacher if we discussed it.  I
read a lot and I tend to snow adults without meaning to, so I sat there
hoping I hadn't be too erudite for my own good.  George smiled, asked if I
was absolutely sure, sort of like you did out by the pool, and then told me
that the dolls were symbols of very intense feelings and feelings that were
often in a very confused state.



   "He went on to explain why, emphasizing he was telling me his opinion
and I should keep my powder dry until I knew enough to have my own.  In his
opinion, the tension all of us felt over the anatomical dolls was a symptom
of unnatural lifestyles wherein what should be natural, if private, is not
only denied but made to seem some kind of big, weird taboo and ultra
colossal sin of degenerate and unspeakable loathsomeness.  Boiled down, the
natural instinct for, and the extreme cultural bias against, caused the
conflict in Miss Ireland's attitude."



   "Do people do it because they're persecuted?" I asked George, "you know,
the way the Mormons and others drew strength from the hatred they
engendered in their communities."

   "That's a good guess," my teacher responded, "but I think it's actually
the other way around.  There is nothing in religion but sham sold as faith,
whereas a man who enters into a relationship with a willing boy has the
article and not the faith.  In fact, I think the outrage of the morally
superior isn't an amalgamating force, but rather a humbling one, allowing
otherwise white and normal men to feel the sour breath accorded the
despised minority and thus come to endure travails of victimization
otherwise denied them."

   "Multi-faceted," I murmured, and George reached across and squeezed my
knee.

   "The supple lad and the chance to role play as the scum of the earth,"
he laughed, "I'll work with that as a definition of multi-faceted, any
day."

   "It's nice to be needed," I said, and he thought that was pretty funny
and squeezed my knee again.



   "Tim," he said, his voice serious, "two things are true.  First, if it
happens reasonably well with a boy, it becomes a highlight of his life and
the very definition of a lasting memory, and, second, it doesn't mean a
thing.  That's part of the reason your teacher was uptight.  She knew she
was making an issue where none existed, because the actual act between an
adult and child amounts to about a hill of squat.  It's intensely exciting,
yet it means nothing.  That's the enigma.  I mean, you'd think with sports
we'd be used to a high level of engagement in the frivolous, but it doesn't
seem to transfer over to sexual relationships.  Those we take penitentiary
serious in twenty-year installments."

   "I know it's really illegal and stuff," I said, trying not to let utter
contempt for the law show in my voice, because I'm a regular kid and like
do what's right and what everyone else is doing, at least most of the time.


   "It's actually highly tolerated," George responded, "and you'll find
open secrets in almost any group; the priest with his favorite altar boy is
a classic example, or the neighbor who lets the kid next door come use his
pool anytime he wants.  Even our taking this trip together; give everyone
who knows about it truth serum, and they'll probably admit to a high level
of suspicion, yet no one will say anything when we get home other than what
you'd expect them to say."



   "It all sounds better than it would be if it were socially acceptable,"
I said.

   "That's the ultimate irony," George responded, "the very tut-tutting of
the morally superior, even in the abstract, adds just the right degree of
something extra over and above what we'd feel if it was kosher and legal."

   "Sort of mostly secret but once in awhile you can tell, too," I said,
trying to summarize my thoughts, and this was especially hard because we'd
just passed a sign saying `Rest Area - 2 Miles.'"

   "'Rest area, two miles.'" George read off, looking over at me.

   "Cool," I said, "I'm not tired a bit."

   "Are you excited?" he asked.



   "Totally," I replied, "more than I ever imagined I could be.  More than
Christmas and birthdays and having my watercolor selected for the exhibit -
one of them was mine, I forgot to mention that - and I can't think of any
more because life isn't very exciting these days."

   "I feel the same," George whispered, "and it's our old friend
`multi-faceted'.  On the one hand, I've never molested a boy as young as
you, and the last time I touched any boy, he was twelve, was over two years
ago.  On the other hand, teaching you, indoctrinating you, well, that
probably means you'll grow up to want to touch willing boys once in awhile,
yourself, so I'm excited for that gift I'm able to give and for the
feelings you'll have, and the boy will have, when your turn comes."

   "How long to I have to wait?" I asked.

   "Until you have sperm," George replied, "that's when you'll become very
exciting to boys your age now, especially curious, intelligent, and
artistic boys because they can imagine the beauty of a young male spilling
his seed."



   "I'm glad you're young," I said as he put on the right blinker and we
began slowing down.

   "I guess I'm kind of lucky that way," George admitted, "but the way it
is, even the thought of touching a boy your age is exciting and enduring
enough to keep the pizza man at bay."

   We pulled into a space and he stopped the engine.  There were a couple
of dozen cars parked and a few people coming and going to let their dogs
run or use the restrooms.

   "Tim," he whispered, "it can happen two different ways.  Privately and
secretively in the back seat.  I have a light blanket in the trunk to cover
us up in case anyone walks by.  Or, I can molest you in one of the stalls
in the men's room.  We can spill a little Coke on ourselves, grab some
paper towels, and if the wrong person comes along, we can say I'm just
cleaning us up, and have the wet shorts to prove it, you know, if things
got more exciting than we want them.  Otherwise, I'll molest you as we're
pretending to clean up, and since it would be perfectly normal for me to
help you, since I got Coke on me, too, we can leave the door of the stall
open."



   "That sounds like the most exciting thing in the world," I said, at a
total loss to think of anything even half so awesome.

   "I'll get you bare chested here in the car," George then explained, "and
we'll walk to the toilet.  When we're in the stall, I'll be wiping you off
from behind with your shorts down around your ankles.  If someone nice
looking comes in, you signal me, and I'll pull your underpants down and
take them and your shorts all the way off.  He'll come in the stall with us
and I'll sit back on the seat with you in my lap.  He probably won't be
able to get naked with us, but he'll still be able to masturbate on you and
cover your chest and belly with his cum, okay?"

   "And you will, too?" I asked in response.





   "It may be just me," he replied.  "But if you've never watched a young
adult cum before, it's pretty exciting, and if you have, it's twice as
exciting, so, if we engage in our little theatric exercise - I wouldn't
necessarily call it a game - you'll probably get to watch at least one
attractive male ejaculate while his semen slicks your chest and belly with
thick, white fluid."

   "I'm glad you're an artist," I said.

   "What happens can range from pig sticking to Rembrandt," George
observed. "It's intensely complex and exciting, yet means nothing, so
appreciating it from the aesthetic viewpoint is, next to having kids with a
good wife, and here's to that, the ultimate aspect of the expression."

   "And I'm not allowed to go off on some tangent," I said, "and start
drawing nothing but men cumming on boys or drooling over pencils, am I
right?"

   "The higher level of mental health you retain, throughout," George
replied, "the more explicitly you'll be rewarded as you mature."

   "Shoot," I responded, "lots of psychiatrists think psychosis is largely
self-inflicted - deliberately self-inflicted - so I was hoping you might
tilt me into lala land where an idle mind is a happy mind."



   "If you don't take it as what it is, beautiful, and nothing else, I'm
not responsible," the man said.

   "Half secret and all beautiful; totally exciting, and buck-naked free,"
I mused.  It did seem pretty wonderful.

   "Okay," George continued, "first piece of evidence.  It happens like
this.  We're play wrestling over the soda can." He got one from the cooler
and I crossed to his seat behind the wheel.  "As we're fooling around, pop,
it splits and leaks." This we did, tussling until the can ruptured.  "I'd
better get that shirt off," he said and I raised my arms.  "Thee are towels
in the trunk, just a minute," he said, then pulled the latch and got out of
the car.  He came back and knelt on the seat, stripping out of his shirt as
he handed me the roll of towels.  Then I got out the driver's door, he
locked the door, and we started walking down the path.  "You're very
beautiful," he whispered as we approached the rest rooms.



   "You are, too," I said.  He put his right arm around my waist and I put
my arm around his legs, then we got inside.  First, we rinsed our shirts in
one of the sinks, then we - I think it was to reinforce the appearance of
innocence - took the first stall.  He went in first and stripped naked,
pulling me gently against him so I could feel his penis all big and hot and
hard against my bare back.  "If a cop comes, it will go down extremely
fast," he whispered, his tone saying not-to-worry.  But that didn't happen.
He undid my belt and unzipped my shorts and dropped them to my feet, then
he started molesting me by running his hands gently all over my tummy and
chest.  A door opened and a fat man came out.  George pulled my shorts up
and said, "sorry, just finishing," when the man looked up.  He kept going.
Then he took my shorts down again and started touching me, this time up
high on my legs.  I put my arms behind me so I could pull him closer,
because I really like the feeling of his boner against me.  This time the
outer door opened and he reached down to pull my shorts back up.  It was a
shy looking boy, about nineteen, with kind of a lot of acne scars.  He had
black hair, kind of medium cut, and was sort of rangy and craggy looking,
not all neat and cute.  He used the toilet for a minute, but looked over at
us.  I didn't have to say anything, George fondled me while Sam - that was
his name - watched, then he pulled my underpants off and picked up them and
my shorts - I was barefoot - and hung them over the door, moving a little
from behind me, so the older boy could see he was naked, too.  "We're just
cleaning up a little spilled soda," he whispered to Sam.  He hesitated a
minute looking toward the door, then came over to us.  "If you have a few
minutes, could you help us out by rinsing off these clothes?" He nodded at
our shirts and shorts and underwear hanging on the wall of the stall.



   "Sure," Sam said, and took the wet things to the sink.  We left the door
open and Sam watched George teaching me.  It was just a little cola, so in
a minute he was done and brought the cloths back.  "Thanks," we both said.
"Would you like to come in with us while they dry a little?" he asked.

   "Okay," Sam whispered.

   "It's Tim's first time," he said as the teenager pulled the door closed
behind us.

   "He's really beautiful," Sam said, no longer trying to hide the huge
bulge in his denim shorts.

   "Have you ever molested a child before?" George whispered.

   "No," Sam replied, "I've just let a couple of guys do stuff under a
blanket.  Mostly I study, but once in awhile I guess I get thinking about
something happening, so I drive out here and get in someone's car for a few
minutes."

   "So you've never been naked while it was happening?" I asked.

   "No," the boy blushed, "just with my zipper open."

   "I think Tim would really like it," my teacher whispered, "if you'd be
naked with us for just a few minutes."

   "The two guys who did stuff with me both told me that the squad care
peeps his wailer as he drives in," the boy told us.

   "Awesome," I said, and, yeah, I know the word is trite do to mega usage,
but the thought we were safe with Sam was kinda way beyond `cool'.



   By this time, George had me in his lap, is penis jutting up between my
thighs.  He took my hands in his and guided them to Sam.  Sam bent over so
he could undo his top button, meantime, I undid his belt and unfastened his
shorts.  It was like the painting we were talking about, you'd need a
hundred colors to stand for the feelings of unzipping the shorts of a tall,
slim teenager and leaving him standing in his white, cotton underpants. 
George guided Sam into displaying for us, and he leaned back against the
door with his hands behind his head and spread his legs.  We sat back just
to look for two or three minutes.  He was so beautiful, you could see why
any kind of picture or photograph is forbidden.  They'd stop the world. 
Nothing could be that exciting, yet he was.  We sat forward on the seat and
Sam moved to us.  George taught me how to touch him, especially his nipples
and up high on his legs.  "Do you want to experiment with kissing?" he
whispered in my ear.  I nodded and he lifted me so I stood on the rim of
the bowl, that made me the perfect height.



   "I've never done this, at all," the older boy whispered, and then we
tried it.  It was a little bumpy and silly at first, but that didn't last.
It was everything we wanted to do with each other, give to and take from
each other, but sort of in miniature, I guess.  In a minute I knew he
wanted my lips and tongue on his penis and that he wanted to experiment
with me that way, too.  It was like we asked each other a lot of questions,
and trusted the answers, so then we just settled down to mash and fool
around for its own sake.  Then I was ready.  George could tell and lowered
me slowly down, letting me lick and kiss Sam all over until I got to his
underpants.  I touched him on the outside.  I'd have to describe it as as
big as a fill grown ear of corn, you know, without the husk, of course, and
he was just as hard.  I went back up to kiss him and make him another full
promise, then spent a long time molesting him with George before we pulled
his briefs down, waiting a second for him to hang them on the door hook. 
Then he displayed again, leaning back against the door of the stall.



   "I couldn't take gym and do sports because I got this way when I was
about eleven," he said.  I don't think his boner was nine inches long, but
I'll bet it was over eight.  George was huge and beautiful, but Sam was
unique; not gaunt at all but very tall and slim, and just hugely male.  His
slightly craggy face, his boyish body, and his huge, thick penis so hard it
glistened like steel, well, I didn't need to have my art teacher along to
know I was looking at something impossible to equal, but it was nice, and
especially so when George lifted me up and turned me around with my feet on
the edge of the bowl like when we'd experimented with kissing.  Sam came up
behind me and pushed his boner up between my legs, then he started
molesting me with both hands, kissing me on the head and shoulders.  There
goes that `awesome' again, and if not right then, for sure when George rose
up to kiss me while he fondled me with both hands and started jerking me
off, his bare chest against me.  And it wasn't so much the feelings of
their hands and lips on me, it was knowing they were both full of sperm and
I was going to see it, I mean it seemed impossible, that there could be
more, but I could sense them getting hotter and more excited and I knew it
was going to happen all over me unless there was a tornado



   Most of all, I wanted to do what I'd promised Sam with my lips against
his tongue, so after a about five minutes I turned and George lowered me
back to his lap to while Sam came to me.  George guided my hand to him and
taught me to masturbate him, then lowered my head really gently, and I
started touching him with my tongue, especially where there was a lot of
seminal fluid.  Sam leaned forward and braced himself on the wall, then
spread his legs wide and pushed to me.  I could just get some of him in my
mouth, but George reached around from behind me and showed me how to cup
him just right with my left hand and continue masturbating him with my
right hand.  That was perfect, especially with George's huge penis hot and
hard against my chest while I had Sam in my mouth and hands.



   While we'd been whispering and getting naked, a couple of people had
left the restroom, and now the door opened again.  Two males - we assumed
because it was the men's room - crossed to the urinals.  We stopped, which
I thought was great because I could feel George and Sam both really tensing
up and I wanted to get molested a lot more before they got me wet.  Then we
heard voices.

   "I don't really have to use this," a soprano voice said.  I wouldn't
have guessed either George or Sam could have gotten any harder, but they
both did, instantly, when they heard that high voice that was a little bit
croaky.  "I just wanted to ask you some things about the camp while we
weren't driving and I thought maybe we could sit in a stall and talk for
awhile."



   "If it makes you nervous, Mel," an older voice said, "we don't have to
even go.  There are lots of regular water parks and adventure parks.  It's
your vacation."

   "No," the boy said quickly, "I'm dying to go with you, it's just that I
have some questions."

   "Fine," the older male said, and they took the stall next to ours.  If I
bent my head I could see the older guy sit on the seat and the boy sit in
his lap.  They were both barefoot like all of us were, so it was easy to
tell from more than their voices they were young.

   "So what's on your mind, cuz," the older voice said as they got
comfortable.

   "Okay, say I'm walking around by myself and a guy wants to like take
pictures of me or go for a walk or something?"

   "How would you feel," the older cousin said "if that didn't happen?"



   There was a long silence, and I think all of us sympathized with the
boy, me especially, because he sounded only a few years older than I was
and I knew how hard it would be for me to admit that the wholesome option
never even occurred to me, I mean how would that sound?

   "Mel," the older male went on, "that will happen.  Guys will invite you
to their rooms to play computer games or watch videos, go for walks, go
swimming at one of the hidden pools, and those are just a few of the
choices.  The whole point of having your first experiences there is to
teach you that; to let you go wild a few times, if it's in your makeup to
do so, and it is, for most of us, and then to learn what the limits are by
negotiating the slippery slope for yourself.  No one there will give you
any kind of disease, not one there will even pressure you to do anything,
much less force you.  In many cases you won't want to accept the
invitation, and a polite shake of the head and No, thanks, is all the armor
you need.  In other cases, you will find the other male attractive, and go
with him.  In some cases, you will be proactive and invite someone, who, I
absolutely guarantee, will go with you."



   "And if I go with anyone, they'll want to touch me?  Does that always
happen, Donny?"

   "Yes," the older boy said (his voice wavering between boy and man as
Mel's was between child and boy), "but to varying degrees.  When I took
your cousin Frank half the time they physical part was over in a few
minutes, but they ended up spending hours or days together because they
liked each other.  Other times he got molested for an hour, then it was
over and not much was said.  Usually, it's about in the middle.  You spend
an hour or two with a new partner, may visit with him a time or two more,
then lose interest."

   "But not with you, Donny," the boy said quickly.

   "That's why they did the phone interviews with us," the cousin said,
"they run them through a polygraph, and only let us come if we're a
dedicated couple, I mean in the sense of being friends, outside anything
that might happen while we're at the nudist camp.  About once in seven or
eight hundred times a boy and his older partner split up and exchange
partners, or one goes home without a partner, while attending, and they
want to keep it that way."



   "Nothing they'll have to worry about with us," Mel said.

   "We passed pretty high on all their tests," his cousin agreed, "and it
will be interesting to see if it can be reduced to science.  If it's like
chemistry right; you get all the ingredients and solvents and temperatures
exactly right, and poof, you get perfect plastic, or something like that.
But in this case the ingredients aren't sodium and copper, they're related
to lifestyle and physical characteristics.  Chuck Werner told me even if we
hadn't been cousins, we would have passed the screening in the high
ninetieth percentile, then he added ten percent because we're redheads and
look ten and fourteen instead of being thirteen and seventeen.  "



   This was so incredible.  Just listening.  It was echoey, so we could
hear even when their voices got really hoarse and low.  We had our
backpacks with our extra clothes - the drying thing was kind of a ploy to
keep Sam with us - on the floor, so no one could see our feet; I mean, it
could have been one hippie using the stall, you know how they like to
travel, plus they always wear headphones, so Mel and Donny wouldn't think
anyone was listening.





   I should interrupt here just for a moment, because we were.  First, we
all wanted to give young Tim a round of applause, not exactly clapping, but
nodding and touching him, in appreciation of his extreme articulateness and
his excellent pacing.  As we were lauding him in our own quiet way, there
was a gentle tap and the frosted door and an older teen looked in.  "My dad
says it's okay if I hang out here for awhile, is that okay?" he asked.

   "Sure," I said.  We'd all used towels to hide ourselves at the boy's
thoughtful tap, and so I added: "Tim here's telling a mature story about
something that happened to him at the beginning of the summer," I added,
"if that's okay with you."

   The young athlete introduced himself and Nathan and entered, letting the
door close behind him and standing for a moment.

   "I asked the scouts," I said, nodding to the group who nodded back, "if
any of them were experienced with older males, and Tim raised his hand, so
he's telling us about what happened to him." The new boy had calm eyes and
a shy smile.  He fit in immediately and two of the eight year olds
spontaneously went to him and pulled down his white briefs, guiding him in
close to the rest of us and then sitting in his lap.



   "Have you molested children before?" I whispered to him.

   "There's a boy who lives down the street that wants me to," Nathan said,
"but I'm afraid I'll get in trouble or mess him up or something.  My dad
kind of encourages me to, you know, not saying anything direct, but just
encouraging our being together and saying it's okay if we use the bathroom
together if we want to; stuff like that.  When we got trapped by the storm
and he found out from the security guard that there might be something
happening in the steam room, he suggested I come down and hang out for
awhile."

   "That's almost exactly like Sam's story," Tim continued, and we all
nodded for him to continue, meantime, stripping away our towels and
displaying for the new boy, who was beautifully hard and big, himself.  "We
found out because we started whispering a little while we were listening to
the teenager and his little cousin in the next stall."





   "Donny," their voices went on in the echoing men's room, "if I do like
someone that invites me, what will he do when he gets me alone?"

   "He'll probably ask you a few questions," the older male replied. 
"First, he'll ask if you like to share your secrets, because some boys
don't like to, then, if you nod your head, he'll ask you about the first
time you were touched, and, if you want, he'll tell you about his first
time, to.  Sometimes it goes on from there, the whispering part, but
usually it's just one or two stories as a couple gets to know each other."

   "Can I tell him?" Mel asked.

   "The rule at `Totally Scientific'," Donny replied, "is that you don't
have to say anything, but if you do want to whisper to him, you should tell
only the truth.  You can be very graphic, but don't make things up or
exaggerate.  Don't be phony."

   "I see," the boy responded.

   "It's not really a game," the older cousin went on, "but in a way you
play it like one.  By acting shy and reserved; not quite flighty and
innocent, that's overdoing it, but, for sure, not bold and aggressive,
because that's the realm of the dollar boys, the hustlers: `hey, Mack,
how'd you like me to muckle on to your man meat and suck your eardrums into
your balls;' that kind of thing.  It has it's place, but not at `Totally
Scientific'."



   They were quiet for awhile, I think we hear Donny putting his hands up
under Mel's shirt and their breathing got a little heavier.  That's when we
whispered ourselves, and Sam told us about a ten year old name Sebastian in
his neighborhood, and how he thought the boy wanted him, Sam, to teach him.



   "Do you think you'll like this in the hands of another cute guy?" we
heard whispered.

   "I want it to be with you a lot, first," Mel whispered back.

   "What happens a lot," the older voice responded, "it that the older
partner stays with his boy the first few times he submits to another man or
boy."

   "You'd watch?" the beautiful voice chirped.

   "If you wanted," his cousin said.

   "That would be so - perfect," Mel hissed, "because I'd like to
experiment a little, but I don't like the though of anyone else touching me
the way you are."

   "Would you like to watch me touch another boy this way?" came the hoarse
whisper.

   "As long as I could be right beside you," Mel said.



   "I should ask you about that," Donny said, "how you'll feel about the
most personal part of being with another male, getting his seed on your
body.  If I was molesting a boy while you watched and he started to
ejaculate, would you want me to hold his penis against you, or let him
spray off somewhere else?"

   "No," the boy again hissed, "on me."

   "Where?" the older cousin husked, "where would you like his sperm?  On
your chest and belly or on your thighs and penis?"

   "Could there be more than one?" was the child's next question.

   "A few times," Donny said.  "The camp has a special arrangement with the
military, and sometimes as many as fifty young guys show up at one time. 
Since they seem to deem us alpha material, I guess it means you can have
several mature guys cum all over you."

   "Could you hold me like this while it was happening?" came the pretty
voice.

   "I could masturbate you and two or three males could sperm on my hand
while I'm jerking you off.  Semen's very slick just after a buy sprays, so
it would feel really nice."

   "Let me feel how it feels without any sperm on me," Mel said.



   I didn't know what anybody else in our stall might have been waiting for
as far a cue went, but that was enough for this kid.  I knew that my little
bare foot would be the best way to bridge the gap between the two stalls,
so I wriggled off George's lap.  Mel had spread his legs wide to show he
was ready for his cousin to touch him, so his foot was almost over in our
stall, anyway, and I ran my toes into his and began wiggling them.





   Once again we interrupted our brilliant young purveyor of oral legend.
We all petted and stroked him as he smiled shyly, a magnet for us all but
to an extra degree to the new boy, Nathan, who seemed somewhere the far
side of transfixed.  Everyone sensed it, and Tim's avid response, so in a
moment or two the older teen was sitting across from Johnny and myself, his
huge penis jutting up between the eight year old's tender, white thighs,
the hot, purple tip of his erection slicking Tim's now panting chest with
seminal fluid.  By now we were all masturbating each other openly,
maintaining a gentle surge with our underage boys as we felt them slowly
tense on our laps and in our arms while they handled we adults with equal
care.





   There was a moment of silence from next door, then a whispered, "Hi."

   "Hi," we whispered back, George taking the lead and continuing on to say
that there were three of us.

   "Have you been listening to us?" Donny asked.

   "Yes," I said, feeling my canary voice would be the least threatening.

   There was a little excited but inaudible whispering from their stall. 
"Would it be safe for us to get together?" Donny asked.  George told them
Sam's story about the polite trooper who kept an eye on the rest area, then
suggested we move down to the last two stalls, more on the basis that we
didn't want to freak anyone out than because it had to do with safety. 
They replied that that was cool with them, and we could hear them standing
up.  "We're naked," George then informed them.



   "I've just got Mel's shirt open," Donny said as we gathered our things
and opened the door to our stall.  Theirs opened at the same time, and we
gathered around, George and Sam both standing behind be and touching me
while they came out.  They hadn't been fooling, they looked like a boy and
a kid, only the kid had a huge erection in his gym shorts.  Donny, looking
maybe fourteen, quickly stripped out of his clothes and got his cousin bare
chested for us to see, then we moved down to the end of the room, finding,
because of the wheelchair thing, there was room for all of us.  Indeed,
with our packs on the floor, even someone looking carefully couldn't see
any feet, much less how many there were.  We huddled around Mel, still in
his gym shorts, the three older males molesting him while George held me up
so we could experiment with kissing.  "Try it this way, first," he
suggested as he lifted me, indicating I should link my fingers behind my
neck and arch toward Mel.  He did the same and the brought us very slowly
together so just our bare chests touched.  That was incredible, and it was
about two minutes before we even wanted to experiment with our lips on each
other.  That was another five minutes, then George lowered me off the rim
of the good old toilet bowl, and I pulled Mel's shorts down.  He was
wearing a supporter strap, and I pulled that down, too, getting him naked
while the others hung his clothes over the door.  Now he was definitely at
least thirteen, and, even though he only had the tiniest wisp of red hair,
he looked almost like an adult and almost as big as his cousin, who was as
big as George and almost as big and hard as Sam.  For a few minutes we just
looked down at each other and tried a little touching.

   "Mel," Donny whispered, breaking our panting silence, "this is the way
it will start with males you're alone with at camp." He demonstrated what
he meant by standing behind his cousin and putting his hands on his inner
shoulders, I guess his collar bone.  "The rule is, if the touch makes you
uncomfortable, say so right away, and move away.  If you agree to more than
a few seconds of this, they you're promising your partner to go all the
way, not change your mind five minutes later."

   "I understand," Mel responded.  "What should I do if I like it."



   "Not too much," his cousin answered.  "Just stand still and let it go
on. In a minute or two, once he's sure of you, the older male will ask if
you want to whisper.  Same rule applies.  You're free to say, "sorry," but
if you do nod your head, you should let him quiz you quite a bit and answer
without embellishing.  He'll ask you how old you were when you started and
who taught you.  If you have a steady partner, which is just to give you an
opening, because you wouldn't be there if you didn't, and probably if
you've started teaching younger boys.  He'll also ask you what kind of
language you like to use, again, this is rhetorical because the camp
doesn't think it's the right place for funk talk about wads and loads and
the words monkeys would use if they could use words in the first place. 
This gives you a chance to say `sperm' and `penis' for him, which is
culturally very exciting.  After that, he'll ask if you're old enough to
have adults cum in your mouth and if you've ever had anyone up inside your
bottom.  It may sound a little cut and dried, but science has a way of
leading you through the initially apparent to more fundamental truths, and
Totally Scientific has fined-tuned the science with their super polygraph,
you know, the one they used to categorize our phone conversations, so they
know not only what best suits most, but what best suits the limited range
of paranormal guests they accept.  So, yes, the list of question complies
to a formula, but also, yes, it's the best list."



   By this time we were standing slightly apart from Donny and Mel, letting
him be the only one to touch his beautiful redheaded cousin.  I was glad I
had two athletic young adults molesting me, I can tell you, because it kept
things at least half even.  Donny's hands went down over the thirteen year
old's shoulders, and came to rest on his flanks, just above his waist.  "If
it happens at school or somewhere where you're dressed," he advised the
boy, "the man will hold you for a minute or two like this, pulling you
gently to him so you can feel his penis against your back, then slide his
hands around in front, low on your stomach, and start pulling your shirt
out of your pants.  You'll understand better when you're older, but the
feeling of a young boy's body and the softness and warmth of his bare skin
are more intense than most erotic alternatives, in their entirety.  In
fact, if it isn't possible to do more, many men will just fondle your bare
belly and chest for a few minutes, and then kiss you on the neck and be
satisfied."

   "I understand," the boy repeated, his handsome cousin now pulling him
close and openly fondling him as we watched.  It was the most beautiful
thing you ever saw in all your born days.  George guided Mel's hands up
around his cousin's neck and the boy spread his legs wide and arched.  That
made it even more beautiful.



   "In a situation like this," George said, taking on the role of leader
because he was a little older than we were and Donny was panting too hard
to do much talking, "the older male always cums off while the younger boys
are still fully excited." As he said it, he pulled me against his right
hip, placing my left arm around his waist and my right hand on his hard
penis.  "Masturbate me on Mel," he whispered.  Sam huddled behind me,
pushing his penis up between my legs and then guiding my right hand as I
started stroking my art teacher.  This time it was different, not
temporizing while we listened to the whispering next door, but really doing
it, jerking him off, because someone was going to die of excitement if we
kept getting over stimulated.  I liked doing it fast and hard with George,
listening to his breath start coming in gasps as he began to tense up in
every muscle of his body, especially his penis which got hotter and harder.
Sam helped guide me so I was holding George against Donny's hand as he
jerked Mel off.  We kept balance by leaning against each other and the
walls, and tried to keep from making too much noise.  It went on and on,
two minutes, then three, then George whispered, "I'm cumming." Donny
stopped masturbating his cousin, holding him still, and Sam showed me how
to hold my teacher still by sliding my hand to the base of his boner, then
gripping really hard.  It took a little while, but all of a sudden we all
gasped out loud and there was hot sperm splashing everywhere, but most of
it filling Donny's cupped fist.  There was never anything so perfect, not
ever, and it kept going on and on.  I think both us kids were surprised,
and Sam, too.  You know, two or three spurts, that's what we were
expecting, not that we knew much about it, but after two or three it was
just starting.  I was so excited watching him be mature I would have hugged
him right in half if I'd had the strength.  It went on so long, Donny
started fondling and stroking his little cousin while it was happening, so
for half a minute Mel was getting jerked off and having a young athlete cum
all over him while it was happening.  Then it was pretty easy to tell the
thirteen year old was tensing up to cum in Donny's hand.  Sam whispered to
me: "His sperm will be lighter and gentler than mine," he said, "why don't
you take him in your mouth, first?" George and Sam both held me in position
as I nodded, and I took the head of Mel's six inch penis in my mouth. 
"Hold him against the tip of your tongue," Sam advised me and I did as he
suggested, letting his cousin keep jerking him off while I licked and
kissed him and sucked him a little, too.  That didn't even last two
minutes. Then he started shaking all over and said, "it's happening with
me." By now I had to be dead and floating.  All the preaching against, and
this was the reality, the totally wildest thing possible, then suddenly a
hot, fast, hard, slightly salty gusher that filled my mouth.  It's not as
nice with a man, I'll tell you frankly; the sperm's too thick and salty to
take more than a few drops, but with a thirteen year old, well, all I can
say, is if you know one, even if he might be a little fat and not the best
friend you ever had, rope him and hog-tie him, then get him to ejaculate on
the tip of your tongue.



   With Mel, it lasted almost a minute.  At first I swallowed his sperm,
then when I knew it was starting to end, I let my mouth get really full. 
When it finished, Sam kept jerking him off and I kissed George and Sam,
letting them both get lots of his thin, watery semen on their tongues.  By
this time, Donny was cumming between Mel's legs, splashing all of us, then
the same thing happened with Sam, and he began to spray without anyone
touching us.  George was jerking me off with his fingers, and I had my
first kid cum while I was watching the two older males spraying.  By that
time, I was ready to croak.  I'd seen and had the best thing that could
ever be imagined.  The experience was total and complete and as we busied
ourselves carefully cleaning up with paper towels I knew that if anything
like it never happened again in my whole life, it wouldn't matter because
it had happened.  I was free to live without questions, hang-ups,
frustrations, and all the malarkey that goes along with those whose moral
stature doesn't allow them an occasionally wild experience.



   That's the end of my story.





   Now, as oldest male, and according to the lore just promulgated, it was
my turn.  I stood and positioned Johnny at my right hip.  Tim lay back in
Nathan's lap, and my boy held me against the eight year old's heaving,
sweating chest.  Like the boy in the story, he began masturbating me harder
and faster than while we'd been listening.  His tension and stroking were
perfect, and his right hand feathered my swollen glans as his left arm went
vice-like around my waist.  "Cum on him, I want to watch you," he coaxed in
an urgent whispered.  "Yes," hissed all the other boys, "get him wet."



   "Hold me high on his chest, almost at his throat," I said to Johnny, and
thrust my hips forward as he complied.  I guess the science aspect of Tim's
story had gone to my head; must have, for me to be scheming at such a
moment, when I could feel every muscle in my body rapidly contracting from
the boys avid stroking.  It took two more minutes, then I warned in a
whisper and a few seconds later began cumming hard and fast all over Tim's
delicate white chest.  Never half so much in my life.  Instinctively, my
thirteen year old slid his hand to my base after I'd begun spurting off
hard and fast, gripping me like iron.  "I'm cumming," I grunted
involuntarily from the hot new pressure, and, indeed, what was happening
got yet more graphic.  It must have gone on for at least a minute, but then
it began ending.  I moved Johnny in front of me the second I was able,
holding him around his panting chest with my left arm and masturbating him
with my right hand, holding the tip of his hard boner high against Tim's
belly.  Again, it was a couple of minutes of turn-blue excitement, then his
guttural warning, and a hot flow of his juvenile semen pooling on the belly
of the eight year old.  Just as his spray began diminishing, Nathan started
cumming off, his first sperm jetting fully to feet up between Tim's legs. I
covered his flaring, hot glans with my palm, slicking Tim's lower belly
with the teen's showering sperm.  That lasted an amazing time, but was
eventually over, leaving Tim with three more-or-less distinct smears of cum
on his front, mine high, Johnny's in the middle, and Nathan's low on his
belly.  The scout leaders guided each of the boys to their fellow cub,
holding and petting them gently while they dipped their tongues and sampled
the sperm of adult, boy, and adolescent.  It worked perfectly, my little
experiment, the boys, easing in, even though for each it was a matter of
really no more than a few seconds, and thus ending up ready for the seed of
their two young leaders.  They quickly jerked Mitch and Hal off on Tim,
then again attacked with their now avid tongues, being free in kissing each
other and we adults with their salty lips and tongues.



   When it was over, it was as over as anything could be.  We smiled shyly
at each other as we carefully cleaned up with our towels, agreed to meet
for dinner in a couple of hours, instinctively knowing nothing erotic would
happen between us in the future, and left the steam room.  The way I
figured it, Johnny and I were cleared for our trip to Mexico, in fact, all
of us were cleared - maybe "empowered" is a better word - to live our lives
with sex neatly pigeonholed at the back of a lower desk drawer, exactly
where it belonged.



   THE END



   The Nifty.org Archive has lots of my stories.  Most are in the Bi files
under Adult/Young Friends and Incest.  Different pen names, or anonymous.
Yes, many of them have essays too.



   Posted by Thomas@btl.net

   xxx