index


Message-ID: <39076asstr$1036325405@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: kellis <kellis@dhp.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: {ASSM} Reversion {Varkel} (M+m+b+g+f+F+) [02/21]
Date: Sun,  3 Nov 2002 07:10:05 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

Reversion

a Novel by Varkel
Summer, 2001



Chapter 2:  Plumbing New Friends


Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Shaefer worked and Phyllis stayed home.
We looked forward to almost three hours alone in her bedroom.

We began with "selfish" sex.  I took the trouble to explain about
sensitivity during orgasm; she was thereafter conscientious about
blowing out her cheeks while I shot her mouth full of sperm.  She
was making a very satisfactory young cocksucker indeed!

Rubbers don't seem to come in different sizes.  At least, Phyll
reported as we relaxed after our first good fuck, size is not
marked on the boxes and she was afraid to steal one of each for a
comparison.  "That must mean you'll grow a lot," she commented
reflectively while gently working me between thumb and fingers.
"But I'll admit, I love your little thing just like it is."  She
shivered.  "It's big enough to send me to heaven."

"To heaven, my sweet?"

She laughed fondly.  "'My sweet!'  Yes, and that's big enough.  I
just wish you didn't have to pull out."

"I'll grow pretty soon," I told her, "nearly another couple
inches longer and fat enough to stretch your rubbers."

She chuckled, looking up at me.  "You are _so_ confident!  Did
you see your father's?"

"Uh, yeah," I lied.  Boys almost never see father's cock erect.
I never had.

She got off the bed, stretching.  Her wet belly glistened.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"To the bathroom.  I feel sticky.  Want a coke?"

"Sure."

Her body had seemed almost excessively big at first; now it was
sweetly Rubenesque.  From my low angle on the bed I could study
the labia rippling between fat cheeks as she walked to the door.
I wondered if she would tolerate anal penetration.  A small cock
might be an advantage there, I thought.  It was an avenue I had
accessed only two or three times in my life.  Being drunk as a
lord each time, I had no clear memory of it.  How to approach her
with the idea -- as a contraceptive, perhaps?

I was toying with one idea or another when she appeared in the
door, cokeless, and called my name rather softly.

"Where's my drink?"

"I want you to do something first."  She spoke in a low,
secretive voice.  "Get up and go to the wall next to the side
window, but don't look out yet."

The bed was under her dormer window.  The bedroom, half of her
mother's second floor, had another window in the side wall at 90
degrees with the sloping dormer wall.  I obeyed her, taking my
station just to the left of the side window.

"Now put one eye around the edge.  Look at the Graden house, the
upstairs window that matches this one.  What do you see?"

I looked.  Something round and glassy was visible between the
curtains behind the glass, about as large as two fists.  "What in
the world is it?"

"It's the objective lens on old Mr. Graden's refractor."

"He's got a telescope?"

"He's an amateur astronomer.  He let me look through it a lot
this summer."

"Did he!  Well, well!  Do you suppose he's been watching us?"

"I don't know.  I saw it from the kitchen window.  And I've seen
it there before.  It might be just a coincidence.  He may store
it in that position."

"Sure.  About as likely as me tripping on the rug and my cock
falling into your pussy."

She giggled.  "Well, that wouldn't be so unlikely just now!"

"I wonder how we could prove he was on the other end of it.  Hmm.
Don't astronomical telescopes show their images upside-down?"

"Oh, I'm sure he has an inverter."

Suddenly I had an idea.  "You got a hand mirror?"

"On the dresser.  What are you going to do?"

Her dresser was on the other side of the window.  I backed away,
walked nonchalantly to the dresser and slid her mirror, a
six-incher, in front of me.  Pretending to be a ballet dancer, I
slithered sideways, my back to the window, holding one arm out
straight while the other compressed the mirror to my belly.  In a
moment I was again beside the window.

I called, "Go downstairs and watch from that angle.  With any
luck, if he's looking you'll see the telescope move.  Let me know
when you're ready."

"I see what you're doing!" she exclaimed with a wide grin while
disappearing from the doorway.

An afternoon sunbeam was barely edging into this window.  I held
the mirror close to it and waited.  In a moment I heard her call,
"Okay!"  With my eye just past the edge, I brought the mirror
fully into the beam.  Its reflected spot of light was easy to
position on the house across the intervening yard, then into that
upstairs window.

I had a pretty good idea how looking into the sun through a
wide-open telescope would affect someone's eye.  The lens in the
far window swung sideways.  For a split second my beam
illuminated the gaping face of old Mr. Graden.  A hand, probably
the one whose rise deflected the telescope, covered his eye just
before his face vanished below the beam.

Phyllis came up the stairs, laughing, as I returned mirror to
dresser.  "Timothy Kimball, you must definitely be the smartest
boy in this town!"

She strode naked to the side window and snatched down the shade.
"There!  That'll fix him."

I regarded her soberly.  "I suspect you're about to get a phone
call."

"From ... from _him_?"

"How old is Graden?  Have you ever heard?"

"Oh, yes, he's talked to me a lot.  He's 66.  He retired last
year."

A year younger than I!  "If he calls, let me speak to him."

Just at that moment the telephone downstairs began to ring.
Phyllis looked at me wide-eyed.  "I'd better answer it in case
it's Mama."

I ran just behind her down the steps.  She lifted the receiver.
"Hello?"

It rattled in her ear.  "Just a minute.  Someone here wants to
talk to you."  She held it out to me.  "He wants to know if we
think we're smart."

I said, "Hello, Mr. Graden.  I'm Timothy Kimball."

He snorted.  "Oh, I know who you are!"

"And I wanted to tell you, we'll put it back up."

"Just wait till I get --  What did you say?"

"We'll put the shade back up."

When the only response was silence, I added, "Your eye will
return to normal in a few more minutes.  The overload was too
brief for permanent damage."

I could hear him breathe.  After a moment he asked, still with a
bit of bluster, "What do you think you mean about the shade?"

"The mirror was a childish prank.  I hope you understand that."

"Damn the mirror!  What did you mean?"

"Keep watching, Mr. Graden."

Gently I hung up the phone and turned to Phyllis, staring at me
with a horrified expression.  "What do you mean, 'keep
watching?'"

"You've been out with him at night, haven't you, to watch the
stars?"

"Well ..."

"Who was with you?"

"Mama."

"Every time?"

She looked away.

I chuckled.  "Were you teasing him along?"

"Timmy!"

I took her in my arms standing naked in her mother's downstairs
hall beside the telephone table.  She had to bend to put her head
on my shoulder.  Her tears wet it.  "I was afraid it would k-kill
him, Timmy," she blubbered.

"He had chest pains?"

"Every time he ... touched me.  We had to quit."

"When was the last time?"

"In August."

"But he never made love to you?"

"Only ... with our mouths."

"You knew he was watching us this afternoon, didn't you?"

"And the other morning in the bright sunlight.  He was so excited
about that.  He made photographs."

"You've seen them?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you call my attention to his telescope?"

She sighed.  "I don't know."

"You wanted to prove something to him?"

"I guess ..."  She sighed again, heavily.  "I guess I wanted to
see what you'd do.  You keep surprising me, Timmy.  I thought you
were a little boy, that I was robbing the cradle.  I called you
my living doll.  But you aren't, are you?"  She stared at me
penetratingly.

"What are you talking about, Phyllis?"

Her eyes narrowed.  "You know exactly what I'm talking about,
don't you -- much better than I do!  Compared to you, Bobby is 
the little boy!"

I remembered the name on the front gate: Robert Graden.  I had to
chuckle.  "You're forgetting one thing."

"What?"

"I don't have chest pains."

Her eyes rounded.  She licked her lips.  "No, you don't."

"Let's go back upstairs."

She followed willingly enough, even put the shade back up
herself.  She did not hesitate to suck me up and fall back
expectantly with her legs wide.  This time as I was coming I
crawled up her body and shot the last couple of squirts into her
mouth.  I crouched on her shoulders, my cockhead dribbling on her
chin.  "Do you still want me to visit you, Phyllis?"

"Please," she said simply, blinking up at me.

"What if you could have Bobby instead?"

"But I would kill him!"

"Tell him to describe his symptoms to the doctors.  They can give
him some pills that will take away the pain."

"What kind of pills?"

I grinned.  "As ridiculous as it sounds, pills made from
nitroglycerin.  I'm certain that by 1947, the medicos know about
nitro's relief of angina."

She stared at me.  "You're knees are hurting my shoulders."

I got off her and began to round up my clothes.  "See if you can
find it at your pharmacy: little white pills of nitroglycerin.
It really works."



* * *



I thought about Graden that night.  It was easy enough to put
myself in his shoes.  Phyll had told me more about him: his
deceased wife, oppressive daughter-in-law, his solitude during
the day when both son and wife worked.  Apparently he maintained
his interest in life by reference to two hobbies: astronomy and
Phyllis.  On Wednesdays she sometimes played checkers with him
after school.  Shy smile.  Nude in his upstairs bedroom.  Wider
smile.  That is, she used to.

Obviously she had enjoyed titillating him.  Her virginal
willingness to take, even to swallow, my seminal fluid ceased to
be a mystery or even a marvel.  Nevertheless I imagine she was 
truly surprised when I unhesitatingly licked her to frenzy on our 
first tryst in the weeds.  I made a note for future reference: 
let them persuade you the first time!

But he never took her maidenhead.  I doubted her explanation that
she feared killing him.  More likely he feared its disclosure
during her next doctor's visit.  I would have.  What was the age
of consent in this state in 1947?  That I could not remember,
though I must have known it a bit later in my teens.

Thursday afternoon I knocked on Graden's door.  I heard dragging
footsteps.  Phyll had reported his bum leg.  He opened the door.
His eyebrows rose.  We stared at each other.  He stepped back and
I walked past him into the room.  He closed the door behind me
and we faced each other.  Though of course bigger than I, he was
not a big man.  He had gray hair and a gray mustache on a
wrinkled, florid face.  He wore slippers, slacks and a frayed
white shirt with the tails out.

He looked me up and down.  I knew what a slim, blond, delectable
sight I was to him, almost as if I could see through his eyes.
Which brought up the question in my pubescent contralto, "Your
eye is all right today, isn't it?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"In fact, it was recovered in time to watch us again, wasn't it?"

He took a breath.  "Why did you come here?"

"First, to apologize."

His mouth gaped.  "To what?"

"You were doing no harm, but I can think of circumstances where I
might have ruined your eye."

"You think I was doing no harm?  Then why did you flash the
mirror?"

I shrugged.  "I am a kid, you know."

"Huh!  You don't sound like it."

I chuckled slightly.  "Don't I?  Show me your telescope."

"You can't see the stars in the daytime."

Of course he was nervous.  He'd had a night to think, too.

I looked into his eyes.  "But you can still take pictures."

He hesitated.  "Who sent you here?"

"No one sent me, Bobby."

He blinked.  "Phyllis told you about us, did she?"

I nodded.  "Enough to understand that you have both been lonely."

"And who have you told about us?"

I smiled and shook my head.  "I'm not a sex reporter, Bobby."

He studied me, frowning, and sneered, "Didn't your mother tell
you not to address adults by their nicknames?"

"Nicknames are used between peers.  Don't let the appearance fool
you."

His eyes widened slightly and he took a breath.  "You said you
came _first_ to apologize."

I nodded.  "Second, to see your telescope and your photographs."

"So you can run and tell the cops?"

I shook my head.  "Don't be paranoid, Bobby.  No one that I know
wishes to harm you in any way."

He barked a laugh.  "Imagine a kid like you even knowing that
word!  All right, _Timmy_, come on upstairs."

To my surprise, this house was laid out as a mirror-image of the
Shaefer's, though both were built long before Levittown.  He led
me up the stairs and through the _right_-hand door on the
landing, where Phyll's bedroom was to the left.  The old man's
bed was neatly made, pushed back against the interior wall.  His
astronomical telescope, a respectable five-inch refractor -- with
an equatorial mount, even! -- occupied the center of the room.
The enclosed prisms of an image inverter were attached to one
end.  A star diagonal, a Barlow tube and several eyepieces sat on
a tray between the tripod legs.

He stood back and watched while I looked it over.  "Home made?" I
asked over my shoulder.

"Home assembled.  I bought plans and subassemblies."

"Yeah, I wouldn't expect you to build the equatorial mount, but
you ground the lens, didn't you?"

"From a quartz blank," he agreed.  He took a breath.  "Tim, how
can you know what you know?  Can you possibly be so interested in
astronomy?"

I grinned.  "Once upon a time.  This looks to be a very
creditable job, Bobby.  Have you made diffraction measurements on
your objective?"

"No, but I think I've seen Procyon B."

He one-upped me there.  I admitted it.  "I've heard that
resolving binaries is an old method of evaluating telescopes.  I
take it Procyon B is a tough one?"

He grinned.  "Maybe too tough.  You're supposed to need a bigger
telescope than mine for that one.  But I've seen _something_ next
to Procyon!"

I stooped slightly and looked through his eyepiece -- into Phyll's
bedroom.  Her neatly made bed lay across the middle of the field.
I asked idly, "How much have you seen next to Phyllis?"

I saw him reach a decision.  He went to a desk and took some
photographic prints out of a drawer.  I noticed a lensless
bellows camera atop the desk, probably for Type 120 film, if
memory serves.

He put the prints in my hands: eight-by-tens in black and white.  
The top one was clearly Phyllis, sprawled naked at the
foot of her bed in very bright sunlight, large breasts glowing,
knees raised.  A blond head was buried in her crotch, attached to
a back arching out of the picture.  Her own head was drawn back
in ecstasy, obvious even in profile.

"She and I last Sunday morning?" I asked.

"Yes."

In the next she was sucking a small cock.  I had only turned
over; she had turned around.  The sunlight was full on her face
and the tops of her breasts.  The contrast in both photos was
very high and dramatic.  In the last one, the third, my hand held
the cock, caught with a white streak between the tip and her
chin.  Her eyes were scrunched shut but she was grinning with a
white blob at the corner of her mouth.  I said, "You snapped this
one at just the right moment, didn't you?  How did you watch --
through the spotting scope?"

"Yes, of course."

Of course.  Exacta was just now inventing the single-lens reflex.

"Remarkable work, Bobby.  Who developed these prints?"

"I did.  I have an enlarger and a small darkroom set up in the
next room."

"These were skillfully done."

"Thank you."  He sounded ironic.

I put them back in his hands.  "You have many other pictures of
Phyllis, don't you?"

He took a breath.  "Is that what this is about?  You want one?"

"No.  I see that you are competent with telescope and camera.
You also have pictures of her doing as much with you, too."  It
was not a question.

His mouth worked.  "What do you really want, Timmy?"

"First I want to find out why she called you to my attention
yesterday."

"Did you ask her?"

"She said, to see what I would do."

He chuckled bitterly.  "I'm sure that was the truth."

"But not all the truth."

"No."  He sighed.  "Let's sit down.  I can't stand around all day
like a young boy."  He gestured to one end of his bed.  He sat
facing me at the other.  "What are you, Timmy, some kind of
midget?"

I chuckled.  "Look at that picture of my cock.  What's missing
besides size?"

"Hair," he answered immediately, not needing to look.

"Almost everything about me is consistent with a twelve-year-old
boy, Bobby.  Almost."

"Yeah," he agreed sarcastically, "almost."

"Actually, I've thought of a reason for her behavior that nearly
checks out.  You wouldn't take her virginity, obviously, despite
your long-duration affair with her.  I may even know the reason
for that, one of them, at least.  She was reduced to conferring
her greatest favor upon a twelve-year-old boy.  I saw her Tuesday
night.  She was just healed enough for vaginal intercourse.  She
talked to you sometime before Wednesday afternoon.  I would guess
that you turned her down again, though when did you have time?"

He took a deep breath.  "She came to see me Wednesday morning."

"What?  She didn't go to school?"

He grinned slightly.  "She sounds exactly like her mother on the
telephone.  She called herself in sick, pretending to be her
mother, then came over here."

"Then that's it.  You turned her down again."

He sighed.  "Yes."

"Didn't she tell you of her new status?"

He stared at me.  His lip curled in derision.  "You thought I
refused because she might squeal on me if a doctor discovered she
was ruined!"

"You had another reason?"

"You little --  What will she do now, when her future _husband_
discovers that she's ruined?"

That set me back.  I stared at him.  He had truly loved her, as
if he were the hypothetical husband himself.  Her announcement --
I could just hear it, "Oh, Bobby, I'm no longer a virgin.  You
can do me now!" -- must have fried his pride to a shriveled
remnant in the rancid grease of jealousy.

"How bad was it?" I asked softly.  "Did you call her names?"

"Not out loud."  He sighed deeply.  "I told her to go on to
school."

I shook my head.  "The world is changing, Bobby.  World War Two
opened a lot of eyes, male and female.  Her future husband won't
care, especially if she catches him young, and you and I are
training her for that, you know."

"Would you marry her?" he sneered.

"In a minute, if I needed a wife.  Which I don't.  Does she visit
you here, in this room?"

"She has a few times, when my son and his wife have gone
somewhere.  We study the star atlas.  She is absolutely
fascinated."

"I know," I said without sarcasm.  "When do they go out?"

"Friday and Saturday nights they usually go to the movies."

"All right.  Phyllis will bring you some pills Friday night.
When you get dull, achy chest pains, especially ones that go to
your upper arm, put one pill under your tongue.  It may give you
a headache, but you can finish what you started."

His eyes widened.  "A medical doctor, too?"

"No, but I've talked to enough of them!  And Bobby, I want to
come with her Friday night."

"Do you!"  He looked me up and down.  "Just what did you have in
mind?"

I grinned at him.  "You've seen how a passionate young woman
handles a boy.  Let's say I'd like to see how she does with an
old man."

* * *

My god, how could I have forgotten Mrs. Potter?

First I saw her name on the main library desk: Amelia Potter,
looked up and there she sat, watching me with that same slight,
Mona-Lisa smile which had driven me crazy about her 55 years ago
-- and again now.  Her long auburn hair was up in a bun, wisps
dangling.  That calculated unkemptness in a woman's hair makes
her seem to have escaped just now from a passionate clinch.  Her
oval face was smooth with a touch of rouge on her cheeks, lips
outlined in red lipstick that was always nearly worn off by the
time I saw her in the afternoon library period.  The small boy in
me had already presumed her a goddess, one he was prepared to
worship from afar for the rest of his life.  The old man agreed
with his judgment of her beauty and added a mouth-watering
appreciation of breasts jutting behind a white linen blouse,
willing to believe in a svelte figure with wide feminine hips
below the desk.  No waif this one: here was the ideal of mature
feminine physical perfection.

I stared at her as the memories of her affectionate attitude
toward me came rushing back, especially toward my regard for the
books that were her first love.  I also recalled, however, that
she had disappeared from the school near the end of this same
semester, never to be seen again; rumor claimed she was pregnant
by a student.

"What's the matter, Timmy?" she asked in her breathy voice,
perfect for a librarian or for assignation in a crowd.  "Do I
have food on my face?"

I walked closer until my hips pressed the desk and said softly,
"No face is more perfect, Mrs. Potter."

Her brown eyes widened and eyebrows rose.

I added, "I was staring, wasn't I?  I'm sorry, but it's your
fault."

She produced an amused sniff.  "Very smooth, Timmy!  Have you
been taking lessons from an older brother?"

"No, ma'am.  I've merely begun to notice people."

Her brows knitted with interest.  She recovered her slight smile.
"Something has changed, has it, Timmy?"

I permitted myself a slight smile of my own.  "Some people are a
lot more interesting than I realized."

"About half of them, Timmy?"

"Why, yes!" I agreed as if the idea surprised me.  "Exactly half
of them!"

Her eyes crinkled knowingly and she chuckled deep in her throat.

I added, staring into her eyes, "But even in that half, some are
many times more interesting than others."

She blinked, holding my stare for a long second.  She licked her
lips.  "And you have reached that conclusion just this week?"

I lowered my voice just above a whisper and retorted, "I think I
reached it in the last minute or two."

Again we stared into each other's eyes.  Her breasts heaved as
she took a deep breath.  She seemed to change the subject.  "Are
you still interested in Renaissance art, Timmy?"

A quick internal consultation reminded me of her reference.  It
was almost a joke.  At the start of the year she had caught me
drawing a moustache on a print of da Vinci's Mona Lisa reproduced
in one of the _Weekly Reader_ comic books that schools circulate
to children.  What boy hasn't?  She had made me squirm, more from
her obvious disappointment than the healthy sarcasm she had
served, comparing the years of da Vinci's labor to my few seconds
of "improvement."

"More than ever," I answered, wondering where her question would
lead.

"Still want to put moustaches on women?"

I fired across her bows, "Not until I have a moustache."  And I
licked my lip.

Her face brightened and her chuckle returned.  "Are you certain
you don't have an older brother?"

"I don't need one."

She reached a decision.  "If you want to see art that might
really interest you, be on the corner at Jefferson's Dime Store
15 minutes after school."  She turned away from me and said
solicitously to a girl who had just walked up, "What do you need,
Mary Ann?"

* * *

She stopped her car in front of me on the corner, leaned across
and pushed the door open.  "Get in."  I hastened to comply.

It was a new '47 Chevy coupe straight six, according to my small
boy, who knew all about cars.  Detroit was producing civilian
vehicles again by now, though the shortages resulting from the
great pent-up wishful backlog were only beginning to work out.  A
brand new car was still rare.  It even smelled new, of rubber and
paint.  I showed her an admiring face.  "Golly, a new Chevy!"

"I'm glad you like it," she said sourly.  Seconds thoughts were
clearly eating her.  "I can't believe I'm doing this."

I responded, "I can't believe how lucky I am."

She snorted and glanced at me narrowly.  "I think I ought to just
take you home, Timmy."

"Are you worried about favoritism, Mrs. Potter?"

Her eyebrows rose.  "Favoritism?"

"Because if you are, Jefferson's Drugs doesn't have a soda
fountain.  That was smart.  No kid saw you pick me up."

"_You_ saw me!"

"Why did you say it like that?"

"Who did you tell, Timmy?"

I didn't answer immediately.  She spared me a searching glance.
Finally I said, "I _am_ proud of this, Mrs. Potter, but I
wouldn't tell anyone about it."

"Why not, if you're so proud?"

"Two reasons.  If you wanted it told, you would've said to meet
you in the parking lot."

"Very good," she responded dryly.  "And what's the other reason?"

I deliberately looked away and pitched my voice lower.  "If I
told anybody, you might like him better."

"Eh?  Say that again."

I repeated it, looking directly at her this time.  She chuckled.
"I like that reason.  When do you have to be home, Timmy?"

"By six o'clock.  How much further is it?"

"A couple of blocks.  I'll have you there on time.  And Timmy,
when we're alone, away from school, call me Mealy, will you?"

"Wouldn't you prefer Amelia?"

"No.  _Mealy_ has the right ... texture."

Crumbly?  Common as meal?  The old man didn't think it would be
smart to ask her exactly what she meant.

She had an apartment in a row most likely built just before the
war, with parking at the rear.  We saw no one else while moving
from car to apartment.  We entered from a stoop at her kitchen
door.  In the next room I could see the front door that no one
ever used, which opened to a small park.  Idealists should never
be allowed to locate houses.

"Care for a coke?" she asked, tossing her purse on the table.

"Yes, I would."

Efficiently she whipped out tumblers from a cabinet, ice cubes
and a coke from the refrigerator and a bottle of Canadian Club
from a drawer.  Coke splashed into one glass, whiskey into the
other.  She handed me the coke, tossed down a slug of booze, made
a face and followed it with a sip from the coke bottle.

I took a long pull of the coke and thanked her for it.  She
studied me over the rim of her glass without answering.  I added,
"Do you have a hammer?"

Her eyebrows rose.  "A hammer?  For what?"

I poured my ice on the sink drain and looked at her.  "To break
the ice."

For a second her eyes were blank.  Was I guilty of another
anachronism, of using an idiom not yet in vogue?  But she laughed
shakily.  "Timmy, I guess I'm nervous."

I nodded.  "So it seems.  You don't usually have a snort when you
first get home, do you?"  I smiled.  "But you're only going to
show me some art."

"I should have asked: how old are you, Timmy?"

"Who said, 'Age as the criterion of maturity is itself an
immature judgment?'"  I grinned.  "Nevermind.  I said it."

She sniffed.  "It's very important in at least one respect.  This
change you recently noticed: does it involve a ... new form of
expression?"

Somehow I didn't think she was referring to art.  "Yes.  A wet
form."

"But it didn't surprise you?"

"I had been told to expect it."

"May I ask ... _where_ you first noticed it?"

I let my eyes twinkle.  "As a matter of fact, I was standing in
front of a full length mirror."

Her face told me this didn't answer her question, then it
cleared, as perhaps she realized it did.  She squared her
shoulders and murmured, "I have such a mirror, too."

I set my glass on the table.  "Where is it?"

Her glass joined mine.  "Follow me."

As she led me along a short hall, I asked, "Whose art shall we
study, Mealy: God's?"

We entered a frilly, feminine bedroom, where she turned to face
me.  "I wouldn't call it that."

I shrugged.  "Call it the art of blind evolution.  By any name I
think you must be a superb example."

She kicked off her medium-heel shoes and turned her back to me.
"This is easier with help."

Her blouse had a long row of buttons half way down the back.  As
I started to untwist them, she said, "May I conclude you like my
looks, Timmy?"

"Very much, Mealy."

"When did you realize it?"

"I have loved your face since I first saw it.  Today I noticed
the rest of you."

"And?"

By that time her blouse was loose.  I reached into the flaps and
unhooked her brassiere.  She pulled the blouse tails out of her
skirt.  Blouse and brassiere went over her head and fell to the
floor.  Still with her back to me, she unbuttoned her waistband.
Down went skirt and panties to be stepped out of.  She turned to
face me at last, wearing only nylons supported by a hip-hugging
garter belt.  She was everything I had expected: narrow waist,
slightly rounded belly with no mother's mark, wide hips, tapering
thighs, and a thick auburn bush in the center.  Her erect nipples
were dark with crinkled areolas so small as to appear virginal.
_Mrs._ Potter!  She could hardly be a virgin.

I took a deep breath.  "Rubens' women were a bit too plump for my
taste.  Mae West was his kind.  I prefer the mid-century American
ideal."  I had to sigh.  "And you are it."

Her eyes twinkled.  "But not Mae West."

"Jane Russell, if I had to pick one, though she doesn't hold a
candle to you."

"'Jane Russell!'" she repeated with a sneer.  "Now you sound more
like age twelve."

I grinned.  "You mean age 16.  But we're speaking of your
_physical_ attributes."

"So we are.  On that subject, what about yours?"

I was naked in a jiffy.  When I stood upright before her, my
little cock poking straight out, she took a breath and said
regretfully, "You promise to be a handsome man, Timmy."

I grinned again.  "I am already more of a man than I seem,
Mealy."

Her eyes narrowed with interest.  "You say that with such
confidence!"

"Perhaps I have reason."  Her bedroom was too neat.  She would
never countenance staining her flowery counterpane.  "Turn down
the bed, Mealy."

She complied and turned with a wry expression to regard me from
the edge.

I gestured.  "After you, _madame_."

You have to play them as you find them.  I had resolved earlier
to let a new woman lead _me_, but here I was taking charge.  She
certainly responded well.  Her lips parted with ineffable irony,
but she lay back smoothly upon the bed, raising her long pale
legs spread apart on the sheet.  I crawled around them and bent
to her.  Though I didn't plan it that way, my first touch of her
person was tongue to clit.  She twitched.  I tweaked the firm
little lump in a narrow circle as my hands stroked her hips, my
nose buried in her crinkly auburn hair.

She trembled slightly.  Her hands caressed the hair of my head.
"Timmy," she asked, "what are you?"

I chuckled through my nose and increased the speed of my tongue,
though not the pressure.  My hands rose over her smooth belly to
her breasts.  The nipples erected immediately in my palms.

Soon her hips began to rock.  "Oh, god, Timmy," she murmured.
Her hands closed on my head, directing me into the center.  I
firmed my tongue and lashed her.  She whimpered, hips rocking
harder.  "Ah, ah, ah --" she stuttered, then produced a contralto
moan that was almost a scream and forced my head away from her.

I sat up, grinning, and wiped my face on the bedsheet.  Her body
writhed.

Her eyes glared at me.  "If you're so smart, surely you know what
comes next!"

So I sagged immediately between her legs.  She gasped as I
entered her.  I don't think women are indifferent to cock size,
but the advantage of the missionary position is that even an inch
or so, along with a slight pubic bulge above it, is enough to put
rhythmic pressure on the clit.  Some women, by no means a
majority, go wild from cervix taps, "womb stroking," which
require at least four or five inches, though just as many
consider them painful and a turn-off.  But all react well to
repeated compression of the clit by the join between cocktop and
pad.  The woman herself will maximize it, if she is aroused, by
rocking her hips back and forth in time with the man's thrusts.
Mealy met me coming and going, so to speak, lifting my knees off
the bed whenever she rolled her hips forward.  I could barely
feel her cervix at the end of my stroke.  Her arms squeezed me
into her soft tits and her mouth sought mine with her tongue
probing.

Her body was decidedly larger than mine.  I was reminded of sex
in the insect kingdom, where males are routinely inferior -- and
routinely consumed by their mates.  This comparison was
strengthened when her hands slid down my back and cupped my ass
cheeks, forcing me to full penetration, seemingly trying to stuff
my entire pelvis into her hot, wet center.

Of course I came too soon.  When she felt it, she relaxed.  Hands
and legs fell away.  She laughed.  I backed off her wonderingly.

"At last!" she said, still chuckling.  "The kid shows up at
last."

I nodded sheepishly.  "As you said, immaturity is important in
some respects."

"Yes, but the disadvantages can also be advantages."  Her eyes
twinkled.  "It's all a matter of timing."  She raised her arm.
"Lie beside me and snuggle, Timmy."

With alacrity I tucked myself in beside her and turned toward her
on my side, my head on her shoulder, squeezing the nipple of a
breast with a hand half its size, my leg thrown over her thighs,
cock dribbling on her hip.  Her arm slipped around my back,
fingers lying in the crack of my ass.  Her other hand stroked my
leg from buttocks to ankle.

"Ah, Timmy!" she breathed.  "You are the work of art here."

"The lesser of two," I agreed, grinning.

She chuckled with pleasure.  "You do like me, then."

"Of course.  But your assumption about immaturity is wrong,
Mealy.  An old man would have lasted no longer in such passionate
beauty."

She cocked her head to look into my eyes, not inches from her
own.  "An old man!  You're sure of that, are you?"

"I am."

"If you say so."  Her lips stretched in a smile.  "I have never
known an old man so well."

I started to contradict her but held my tongue in time.  It's
interesting how the ultimate intimacy inspires confession.  Then
I recalled: this was 1947.  I had just committed a grave faux pas
for 1947.

"Mealy, I just realized ...  My selfishness has put you at risk."

"_Your_ selfishness?"

Did she admit to some complicity in our present circumstances?
Well, of course the world would assign _all_ the blame to her.

"Are you counting on very youthful semen containing mostly
incomplete gametes?"

"Wh-what?"  She smiled slowly.  "I had to think to understand
what you meant.  I know you've read a great deal, Timmy, but how
can you possibly know all this?  How could you know to lick me
... just _there_?  You are the first man to do it."

I smiled.  "First _man_?"

She nodded.  "I'm beginning to agree with you: you are far more
man than you seem."

"But not the first person?"

"Oh, girls do it for each other sometimes," she responded
deprecatingly.  She grinned.  "Are you interested in my sexual
history, Timmy?  I doubt it's longer than yours, despite your
age.  I came as a virgin to my husband.  We learned to enjoy each
other so sweetly!  Then he died on a French beach."  She shook
her head.  "I really don't know what I'm doing this afternoon,
what it means for either of us."  She added a sigh.  "I just hope
I'm not doing harm to you."

I could have laughed but remained carefully serious.  "No, Mealy.
You are doing me no harm."  Harm to herself was a different
question.

Her hand in my ass pressed my half-hard cock against her hip.
"You are so pretty, Timmy, but your eyes are so old.  I could
tell they were seeing through my dress, into my soul.  Something
about you, even though you're only a boy, melts me, makes my
knees weak.  God only knows what you will do to other women as
you grow up!  But I wanted more than your eyes, Timmy.  I still
do."

"I'm sorry about your husband, Amelia."

"In a way I'm not.  You would make me unfaithful to him."

She pulled away from me.  Hands on my hips turned me onto my
back.  She knelt low beside me.  She took one of my hands and
pressed a nipple into the palm.  Her head descended and her mouth
enclosed my entire genitals.

The hand on her tit suggested her motive was only to stiffen me.
I caught her around the waist.  "Let me lick you at the same
time, Mealy."

She swung her hips over me.  Clasping them, I pulled my face up
between her legs.  Subtlety was hardly necessary.  I stroked her
clit firmly.  In a few seconds she moaned and fell off beside me.
I clambered atop her and we fucked -- which is the right word.
Nothing else in the world mattered for those long minutes.  When
I finally came again, after many of her climaxes, we were both
slick with sweat.  She held me atop her, panting, while she
licked my neck and ear.

Finally I remembered what I had wanted to ask her before.
"Shouldn't you douche?"

Her breath patted my cheek as she chuckled.  "I think I'll count
on -- what did you call it? -- incomplete gametes."

We said little more.  She dropped me off a block from home and
sat in her new car, watching me skip away down the sidewalk like
a kid.

* * *

Phyllis met me at Graden's door.  "Quick, come on in!" she
ordered, pulling on my arm, glancing furtively around at the
windows lit in her own house.  I had wondered briefly at the lack
of a porch light.  This explained it.

I followed her upstairs to the old man's bedroom.  "I didn't
doubt you'd show up," he said by way of greeting.

"Didn't you?"  I only laughed.  Despite his half-hearted
acceptance, I felt more at ease with the three of us than at any
time since the reversion.  These two knew I was weird in an
unfathomable way, that only my physical characteristics were
those of a twelve-year-old.  Yet they not only accepted it but
seemed to be comfortable with my strangeness.  I could say
nothing too outlandish for them, though only half my truth was
sufficient for that.

Phyllis was giggly nervous.  She was a sexually excited girl who
expected to be fucked silly that evening by two guys for whom she
cared.  I really don't think she would have been happier with a
couple of the sweetest hunks in her high school.  We, Graden and
I, promised her a unique, less banal sexual experience.  Banal 
is perhaps the wrong word, because the girl was still
inexperienced, and would likely find the carnal offerings of a
young buck far from tedious.  But unique we certainly were.  She
would never have the blissful opportunity to enjoy the sexual
delights of another hairless, androgynous beauty without
restraint or inhibition, however modest his pretty cock, while at
the same time enduring a genuinely dramatic challenge to avoid
fucking an old man to death.

He seemed willing to take that risk.  He sat in his chair and
glanced smugly back and forth at the two youths without
questioning why we would consider him a valid sexual partner.
Phyllis might perhaps feel an honest affection for the old coot,
but he was little more than a stranger to me.  Though I imagined
that beneath his clothes was a grotesque ancient body, hairy,
bulging and frail, the thought of physical contact with such
decrepitude did not revolt the young creature I appeared to be.
Rather it was the memory of myself as I had appeared not so long
before -- and would appear so long from now -- that was 
disgusting.  It was not the vision of a sleek youth coupled 
somehow with a used-up body that was distasteful, it was the 
image of two such bodies in a sexual embrace.  I resolved to 
avoid his feeble cock no matter how bravely he might get it up.  
As for my own, he was welcome to a taste.

As Phyllis and I undressed, I said, "In case I gave you the wrong
impression, Bobby, I don't lust after old men.  If you want to
titillate yourself with me, I'm not opposed, but you needn't fear
the reverse."

He grinned.  "You have an alluring body, Timmy, but it's all an
illusion.  Although I've never touched a boy before, much less a
man, I could be tempted by your prettiness.  Perhaps I might take
a quick slurp of your immature cock tonight just to satisfy my
curiosity, but if I kiss those rosy lips and look into your eyes,
I'd probably vomit.  There's an old man hidden in you, as
physically unsavory as myself, and your eyes reveal it."

"We're not here for guy sex," Phyllis huffed indignantly,
resentful of the suggestion that she was not the focus of our
lust.

She twirled about in her nakedness, arms aloft, fingers touching
like a houri seeking the attention of distracted princes.  She
slithered to Graden, still in his chair, and bent her knees to
thrust a bountiful tit into his face.

"Get undressed, Bobby," she cooed and tugged playfully at the
collar of his robe.

"I'll do that," he announced, pushing himself up in a lopsided
manner until he stood.  "But what I most want is to observe some
kids fucking close up."

"Bobby!" Phyllis exclaimed with a cute pout, "are you just going
to play the peeping tom tonight?"

"I'll be more than that, darling.  I'll have my nose and lips at
the sweet juncture, if you make room for me."

"There'd be no problem with that, Bobby," I responded, "if Phyll
gets on top.  But we can't fuck properly because the rubber keeps
slipping off."

"Oh, hoo!  How the fates work their magic!"  His florid face
beamed so joyfully I though he would have a big one.

"You're in luck, Timmy," he boomed.  "My son was stationed in
Japan and he returned with a present that was meant as a joke.
Are you ready?"  He reached into a drawer and pulled back a fist
full of small shiny packets.  "Rubbers made for Nip dicks!  Would
you believe it?"  He let them drop onto the floor.

Phyllis leaned down to retrieve one, ripped it open and offered
the latex ring for my inspection.  "Try it on," she urged me
breathlessly.

I rolled it onto my cock.  It fit snuggly.

"It's just your size, Timmy," she squealed.

"You can buy all you need down in China town," Graden suggested
helpfully.

Of course!  I thought.  A billion small Asians would not have
bothered with European condoms.

'Let's see if it works," I said playfully, pulling the plump girl
into my arms.

"I'd like to work her into the mood, boy," Graden protested and
eased her naked body away from mine.

The two of them moved to the nearby bed where Phyllis threw
herself heavily onto her back.  Graden, naked at last, climbed
after her more slowly.  His body was as ugly as I had feared.
The sight of him kissing and slobbering her abundant flesh was
scarcely erotic, although when he began to eat her out with her
legs draped over his shoulders, I felt a definite stirring of
interest.  I watched her face exhibit the onset of her climax.
She looked at me all the while, making me a participant.  Her
mouth and eyes opened widely before she cried out without
inhibition.

Graden knew when to stop.  He rose to a sitting position between
her legs, his face smeared with her juices, and grinned at me.
"Okay, Timmy.  It's your turn now."  He got to his feet.  "Just
climb on and make her squeak."

I quickly lowered my body between her raised knees and easily
penetrated her lubricious hole.  She was still aroused from
Graden.  It was a joyful, carefree fuck.  We did not have to
worry about pulling apart at the last minute.  She abandoned
herself to utter bliss and I serviced her selflessly for the
moment, playing the continuo, as it were.  Her arms and thighs
grasped me tightly when she cried out in orgasm.

"Another one!  Another one, please!" she gasped without a pause
in her fucking.

Pumping away, I felt trembling fingers stroke my balls.  Over my
shoulder I saw the old man bent close to our junction, both hands
reaching between our legs.  He grasped the base of my cock
briefly, inserted a finger into her beside it, even probed my
asshole.  Doubtless he was doing the same to her.  From her
constant moaning and clipping sphincters she must have been
having climax after climax.

It soon became too much for me.  Graden's handling but mostly the
feel of her flesh against mine, the warm tightness on my cock,
forced me to think of my own need.  She screeched with
abandon as I felt my own exquisite pleasure.  I lay atop her for
a moment as we caught out breath.

"Come on, Timmy," Graden called impatiently, pulling at my
shoulder.  "I want to do it now."

I dismounted the girl and got to my feet.  The tip of the
Japanese rubber drooped with the weight of youthful semen.  It
had remained intact.

"Let me get on top, Bobby," Phyllis insisted and rose to a
kneeling position on the bed.  "I don't want you to exert
yourself."

I lost interest in their fucking after a minute.  It was not a
pretty sight.  I slipped the rubber off my cock and went
downstairs to the kitchen in search of a coke.  I had just taken
a cold bottle in each hand and closed the refrigerator when I
heard the sound of a car door closing outside next to the garage.
A peep out the kitchen window revealed a man and woman on the
rear walk.

I flew upstairs.  Phyllis was gyrating atop the old man,
grimacing, obviously coming again.  What a night for her!  His
mouth was open to draw stentorian breaths.  I closed the door of
his room, put down the cokes and took hold of the girl's
shoulder.

"Better hold it down.  Graden's kids are coming in the back
door."

She flashed me a look of irritation.  "Oh, darn!"  Immediately
she ceased to bounce the bed.

Graden was more explicit.  "God damn them!" he muttered.  "I told
them they wouldn't like that movie.  And I was about to come!"

Quickly Phyllis got off him and knelt beside his narrow bed.  He
had a nice sized cock that she likely had appreciated.  If it's
true that cocks shrink as they age, this one must have been a
whopper.  I hardly got a glimpse of it before half of it vanished
into her mouth.

"Come here," he said, staring at me as her head began to bob.

I stopped with my cock hanging over his face.  "You don't care if
they find us here?"

"Keep your voice down.  They won't bother me if we don't make a
lot of noise.  They'll go to bed and make plenty of noise
themselves."

Phyllis raised her head.  "Don't worry, Timmy.  It's happened
before.  I know how to sneak out."

"I'll bet!"

She blushed, head descending.  I shrugged and leaned forward
slightly.  The old man's mouth closed over my half hard cock.  He
tongued it rather well, I thought, suggesting more than imaginary
experience, enough to firm it up, but not enough to get me off.
The combination got him, though.  He spat me out and tilted his
head back, tendons appearing in his wrinkled throat, and grunted
as Phyllis froze.  She did not raise herself until he relaxed.

Her mouth appeared dry, but his cock glistened and one white drop
filled the eye.  She saw my expression, grinned and stuck out a
pink tongue at me.

Graden sighed and turned over, his face to the wall.  Phyllis
gathered up our clothing, passing mine to me.  In a curiously
short time bedsprings began to creak rhythmically somewhere in
the house.  Of course:  no TV!  Phyllis bent to kiss Graden's
cheek, then led me by the hand downstairs, keeping close to the
wall of the staircase, and out the front door, which she shut
silently behind us.  Even through the closed door we could hear
the bed monotonously creaking on.

Phyllis whispered to me in evident awe, "He can keep that up for
an hour!"

"Which only means his partner is not as exciting as mine."

"Oh, you!"  But she chuckled with pleasure.

We walked out to the common driveway between the two houses.  She
looked up at the light in an upstairs window of hers.  She pulled
me against her.  "Let's go to the basement."

"Your mother's waiting up for you, I expect.  Where'd you tell
her you were going?"

"To study the stars with Mr. Graden."

"She knows his kids are home."

"Oh.  Yeah."

"Didn't you get enough, Phyl?"

"Enough?  You can't get enough of heaven!"

"I guess not.  Kiss me."

She pulled me against her, lips enveloping mine, her tongue
probing.  I pulled up her skirt between us, put three fingers
into her and compressed her clit with my thumb.  Soon she was
groaning and shivering.  In another moment she simply sat down in
the driveway, staring up at me in the light from the corner
streetlight, mouth hanging open and drooling our combined spit.

"Oh my god, Timmy!" she moaned.

Suddenly I remembered Amelia Potter's concern that she might have
harmed me somehow.  What about Phyllis?  I had a clear
premonition that I was changing Phyllis into something she would
never otherwise have been, not necessarily for the better,
either.  I turned on my heel and left her sitting on the gravel,
ignoring her soft calls for me to return.

* * *

The proof is coming in for multiple universes.  The one I now
occupy is truly different from my native one.

I had written a five page report for school but couldn't find a
paperclip in the desk in my room, nor even after a surreptitious
search in Mom's desk.  So I found Mom instead.

"Can you loan me a paperclip?"

She chuckled.  "_Loan_ you one, Timmy?"  Suddenly she frowned.
"I just gave you a handful last month.  Have you shot them all up
already?"

_Shot_?  I stared at her blankly.  How does one shoot paperclips?

She wiped her hands.  "Did you even bother to look?"  She studied
me with a calculating grin.  "If I find more than two in your
desk, I'll make you wash the back windows for me."

I had searched my desk thoroughly and felt confident.  "And if
you don't?"

But she was marching upstairs to my room.  I followed on her
heels.  She darted straight to my desk and opened the wide middle
drawer.  "Hah!" she exclaimed triumphantly, holding up a bunch of
bent wire that I had noticed but assumed to be some toy that
might once have interested me.  She grinned.  "I'm going for the
rags and the spray."

"B-but --"

"I'm serious, Tim.  You didn't even _look_!  You will do those
windows before tomorrow night, you hear me?"

"Yes'm."

She shoved the mass of wire into my hand and sailed back
downstairs.  I poked it with a forefinger and discovered that,
yes, it consisted of several individual pieces, made of about
Number 20 iron wire, each separate piece shaped into two
concentric oval loops, one smaller than the other.  I took a
piece, played with it a moment and saw how it could indeed clip a
few pieces of paper together.

A paperclip in my old universe was typically a half-inch circular
helix of perhaps Number 22 steel rolled into three or four turns.
You simply stuck your papers between adjacent turns.  You could
even segregate them into separate stacks, one less than the
number of turns in the helix.  These new -- to me -- paperclips
could only hold one stack each.  Perhaps cheaper was their
advantage.  Certainly they were made of cheaper wire.  When I
bent the inner loop up sharply, it did not even offer to spring
back.  Hmm.  And if I bent one paperclip just so, it could be
used to shoot an undeformed paperclip across the room.  Ah, yes!

I took one of the curious things downstairs and asked Mom, "Are
these the only kind of paperclips in the house?"

She cocked an eyebrow at me.  "Your father might have some larger
ones."

"That's what I need!" I asserted.

She heaved a sigh, but left the kitchen for her bedroom,
returning in a moment with another piece of wire.  "I hope this
will do, Timmy.  He only has a few of them."

"Thanks, Mom!"  I took it upstairs.  It was identical to the
first except about half-again larger, made of maybe Number 18
wire.

I sat down on the bed, feeling cold.  I had been blithely sailing
along, sure of my footing, almost contemptuously confident of my
circumstances.  This was a blow.  What else would be different?

Then I realized I had already noticed another difference -- that
is, noticed without registering it.  I had seen bathtubs in my
father's house, at Ritchie's, at Phyllis's, at Graden's and at
Mealy's.  All of them had the drain located directly under the
faucet and the knobs, instead of at the opposite end of the tub,
despite the fact that fresh water entering the tub must fall
first into fouled water!  In my own universe drains were at the
other end so that fresh water would scour out the foul.  However
did these people arrive at the wrong arrangement?

The third difference I noticed was in myself.  I wanted to neaten
up another report, a lengthy one in which I found myself unable
to accept the claimed noble purity of Christopher Columbus.  I
asked Mom, "Can I use your typewriter?"

She looked up at me from her perusal of _The Saturday Evening
Post_, noted the swath of papers in my hand and warned, "Of
course, Timmy, but you know that once you start something I want
you to finish it."

"Oh, I'll finish it," I asserted, staring at her in wonder.  Why
shouldn't I?

She smiled indulgently.  "I just opened a fresh ream of paper in
the top drawer."

"Oh.  Thanks, Mom!"

I took my seat before the machine.  It had grown!  But I
ratcheted in a sheet of paper, set my margins and tab stops and
began to type.  The keyboard was larger than it should have been
and at first I had consciously to reach farther for Y and B.  I
missed the Enter key terribly at first, but to reach up and throw
the carriage return lever soon became automatic, and the little
bell dinging as I approached the right margin was even pleasant.
This was a manual machine, of course, and I had to pound the hell
out of the keys, but after all I had taught myself to type on
this same old Underwood when I was 16 or 17, and --

So how could I possibly know the touch system at twelve?

Where do you learn to touch type?  I had always thought the skill
must reside mainly in the ganglia that are local to arm and hand
muscles, as has been proven in the case of talented pianists,
because you can hardly reach 60 words-per-minute if the brain has
to direct each letter individually.  A good typist thinks of the
_word_, not the letters, and his hands seem to translate for him.
True, I had begun slowly and cautiously, but before I finished
the first page, I was up to 30 or 40 WPM easily.  One part of my
mind considered this.  Could it simply be a matter of confidence?
If the central processor tells the ganglia, "I know damned well
you can do it because you've done it before," do they then buckle
down and learn it without further hesitation?  If someone could
figure out how to instill such perfect confidence, learning
physical skills might get a lot faster.

The ten hand-written pages were shrinking to six at the
typewriter, even double-spaced.  Inserting the last sheet of
paper, I noticed Mamma arrive beside me and scoop up the output
pile.  Uh-oh!  I couldn't believe I hadn't expected her to
notice!  In the kitchen it must have sounded like a machine-gun
in her bedroom.  It was strange only that it took her so long to
check.

Her eyes dropped to mine.  Her voice had a breathy quality.
"Timmy, where in the world did you learn to type like this?"

Right here, was the truth -- in another universe!  Did Ritchie's
folks own a typewriter?  I couldn't for the life of me remember,
nor even what they did for a living.  But the truth would hardly
serve.

"I've been practicing at Ritchie's."

"At Ritchie's?  What does a steelworker need with a typewriter?"

"It's an old one.  This one is much smoother."

"And this English is ...  I spot one or two typos.  Here you have
HTE when you meant THE, and here you typed _of_ when you meant
_or_.  But by and large ..."  Her finger found a spot.  "'Wishful
benevolent hypotheses!'  You knew how to spell that?"  She picked
up my notebook paper.  "This is your handwriting, isn't it?"

"Ah, yes."

"Where did you copy this, son?  Who is it that claims Columbus
tried to enslave the Caribbean natives?"

"He did enslave them, Mom."

"He ..."  She looked up into the distance.  "He named them
Indians because he thought he had reached India."

"And even thinking them representatives of a known and revered
nation, allowed his brothers to make slaves of them."

She looked at me and shook her head.  "Without Columbus we
wouldn't be here.  Why run him down?"

"Because of what Santayana said.  If you don't know the past,
you're bound to repeat it.  _All_ of the past!  Columbus was a
man with a man's limits, not a saint.  What he did afterwards is
important, too."

"How did you learn about it?"

"I read things besides my textbooks."

"In the school library?"

I dimly remembered that Mamma had briefly served on the local
school board.  Do you suppose it had an explicit policy of
sugarcoating the stuff furnished to kids?  I answered, "In the
town library."

Surely a good European encyclopedia, such as _Britannica_,
wouldn't sugar-coat Columbus!  Woops!  Didn't Sears-Roebuck buy
the Britannica in the Twenties?  Where _would_ I find the truth
about Columbus in 1947?  I could mention _Der grosse Brockhaus_,
except how would I explain my knowledge of German?

But she didn't pursue that.  She returned to the first page.
"You mean to hand this in for History?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"It'll cause trouble, son."

"It's another A."

She sighed and left me alone.  At dinner she looked at me
strangely.  Later in the evening I saw Dad and her with their
heads together, often glancing at me.

Using her typewriter had been a stupid stunt.  The internal old
man was highly displeased with me, though he had failed to object
at the time.

But touch-typing could be remembered before you learned it!  In
Korea I had learned to play chords and not-too-intricate
arpeggios on a guitar.  I shaped my left hand to chord a G.
Obviously the hand was too small to reach across all six strings.
On a ukulele, now ...

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html>  Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}|
|Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org>      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+