Candy-coated Popcorn, Peanuts, and a Prize

(Newsboy IV)

By Jacqueline Jillinghoff

I

The first time I saw Gretchen, she was a tow-headed, half-naked six-year-old standing on her mother’s foot. She was barelegged, barebacked. A crescent of white cotton panties hugged her tiny butt. She held one of her mother’s hands in both of her own and swung at arm’s length over the kitchen floor. Suddenly, her head dropped backward, unfurling her long hair, and as her mom handed me a dollar bill, she gave me an upside-down smile.

“Hel-looooo,” she drawled, her voice as low as she could make it. Then. brightly: “I’m topless!”

“In more ways than one,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Gretchen, behave yourself,” her mother said. “Let go. I need both my hands.”

But the little girl only laughed and squatted like a monkey, putting more dead weight on her poor mother’s arm. The movement drew her underpants down, and I found myself staring at the tip of a shadow-line that peeped above the waistband. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I didn’t see her bare chest, which was turned away from me the whole time, and though I tried to rationalize, assuring myself there was nothing to see, I couldn’t quite get over my disappointment. For a long time afterward, I imagined that cotton-swaddled ass whenever I played with my dick.

But I wasn’t thinking about love. In time, I looked at other girls, jerked off to other fantasies. Gretchen was always clothed when I saw her, and she became just another little kid — the cutest little kid on my paper route, sure, but a little kid nonetheless. She grew up under my radar until a summer afternoon four years later, when I found myself staring at her again.

It was one of those steamy mid-July days that beat you into an irritable stupor. The papers in my bag were thick with ads and stuffed with inserts. The strap bit painfully into my shoulder as I trudged from door to door, bent over like Groucho Marx, balancing the load on my hip. My hands were black with ink, and so was my face, where I had scratched my nose and wiped my forehead.

I was a sweaty mess, even if, in a vain attempt to beat the heat, I was wearing as little as possible: a gray T-shirt, baggy gray gym shorts tied with a drawstring, sneakers and thick gym socks. I left my underwear at home — strictly for ventilation, I assure you — and that seemed to help. The miniscule breeze I stirred up as I walked dried the sweat on my balls. My penis is small when I’m not erect, and it made only a small bump against my shorts, but my scrotum drooped in the heat, tickling as it slid against one naked thigh, then the other.

I tucked a fat paper into the railing beside Gretchen’s kitchen door and headed around the back of the house. The next stop on my route was the rear porch of a cottage across the driveway that divided the block from end to end. It was smaller but prettier than the twin Gretchen lived in — and built, I suppose, before the postwar housing boom, when developers paid off the city fathers for the privilege of double-density construction.

Gretchen’s house had a built-in garage under the kitchen, and, coming down the back steps, I saw the big door was rolled up. From inside came the purling sound of rapidly running water, as though somebody was filling a bathtub.

I stepped across the yawning entrance, and there she was, standing at the center of a molded-plastic wading pool like a marble nymph in a fountain. She held a garden hose above her head, and a wavering column of water drenched her hair, widened into a sheet over her bare shoulders and back, and, breaking into droplets, drizzled from her legs. She was topless again, wearing only the bottom half of a teal bathing suit. The cloth, thick with water, was pinched into the centerline of her butt, exposing a pair of wet moons at nearly full phase. All I had to do was reach out my filthy hand and —

“Hi!” she said, looking quickly over her naked shoulder.

“Hi there,” was all I could think of. I dropped my heavy bag on the hot concrete.

Lowering the hose, she turned to face me. Her wet hair was flat against her head. It trailed off her shoulder, covering her right nipple like a rag. The left nipple, the one I could see, was coral pink, and it gazed at me blindly like a button eye on a doll. Her chest was flat muscle, with rippling shadows of rib that curled beneath her arms. There was no mound, not a hint of pubescent swelling, but the simple awareness of her nudity made me tingle. Even more arousing was the sight of her bikini bottom, a soggy triangle that vac-u-formed itself to the cleft between her legs. Suddenly I wished I had worn briefs.

“You look yucky,” she said.

“I feel yucky,” I said. “So I’m consistent, at least.”

“You want a drink?” She held the hose toward me.

“Yes, thank you. I would.”

I stepped into the garage. It wasn’t much cooler inside, but as sweaty as I was, I felt a sudden chill, and I sneezed big time.

“God bless you,” she said.

Just as I bent over to take a sip, she plugged the nozzle with her thumb and sprayed me in the face.

“Gotcha!” she said.

“Yes. Yes you did.”

“You really want a sip? I won’t do it again.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

I knew what was coming, but I liked the game if it kept me in the presence of this pretty little girl. I leaned in again, and again I got a face full of water.

“Good one,” I said. “You’re really clever.”

“OK I won’t do it this time.”

“Darn right you won’t,” I said, wresting the hose from her hand.

“Hey, no fair!”

“Life is seldom fair,” I said. I took a long swallow. Then I turned the cock on the garage wall, shutting off the water, and dropped the hose on the garage floor.

“Hey!” she protested again.

“The pool’s almost full,” I said. “You don’t want it to run over.”

The spray on my glasses blurred my vision. I wiped them off with a dry corner of my shirt, and when I put them back on, I looked around the pool for her halter. There was none to be seen.

“You leave your top inside?” I asked.

“Uh huh.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. I just never wear one,” she said.

“Never? What if somebody sees you?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t have anything to look at.”

My dick would have argued the point. It had stirred the instant I saw her, and now it was hanging in my shorts like a tree trunk in a hammock.

Of course, she had to ask: “What’s that?”

“No, that’s not a gun in my pocket, and yes, I am glad to see you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“It’s my pecan nut roll,” I said, trying a different joke. “I always carry it with me.”

“Can I have some?”

“I want to give you all of it, but I really shouldn’t,” I said.

“How come?”

“It’s not really a nut roll. I just said that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It is my penis,” I said. “And it got all big and hard as soon as I saw you because you’re so hot and sexy. Didn’t your mom ever tell you what happens to a boy when he sees a naked girl?”

“Could I see it?” she said.

“Oh … God,” I said. “We really shouldn’t.”

“Please? I won’t tell. I promise.”

“You promised with the hose, and I got a faceful of water.”

“This one for real.”

“Cross your heart.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said, tracing an X over her naked chest bone.

Je. Sus. Christ. I don’t know why I even thought about doing it, especially in front of a wide-open garage door. Except that I wanted to. I wanted to more than anything in the fucking world. Plunging ahead, so that I didn’t have to think, I yanked open the drawstring, and my baggy shorts dropped to my ankles.

“It all hairy,” she said.

“No it isn’t. It doesn’t have any hair. The hair is all at one end.”

Her eyes bored into it.

“It looks like one of those monkeys with the big noses,” she said.

“It serves its purpose.”

Actually, it was starting to hurt. It didn’t seem possible, but it was getting harder, straining to burst through its own skin. I had to get off or get away. I was debating with myself whether to jerk off in front of her when, with a child’s clinical curiosity, she took it to the next level.

“Can I touch it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She grabbed it the way you’d grab a hammer.

“You like that?” I said.

“It’s kinda cool.”

Relaxing her grip, she slid her hand down to my balls, then back along the full length. Her damp fingers brushed that incredible sweet spot on the underside, where the arrowhead joins the shaft. A thrill of cool relief rushed through my body. I let out an involuntary moan.

“Whatsa matter?” she said. Startled, she let go.

“No, no,” I said. I took her hand in both of mine and wrapped it around my dork again. “It feels good. Don’t you ever touch yourself there?”

“I don’t have one!” she said.

“I mean, don’t you ever touch yourself between your legs so it feels good?”

“That’s gross!”

“It’s not gross. I bet you if I touched you there, you’d like it.”

She thought about that for a moment, holding my dick absent-mindedly. Then one corner of her mouth cocked into a wicked half-grin. She peeked around me to make sure no one was coming down the driveway.

“Nobody can see you,” I said. “I’m the one standing here with my rear end hanging out.”

“Go ahead — if ya want,” she said.

“Could we close the door?” I said.

“Uh uh. Do it now.”

The bottom of her suit was held up by two knots, one below each slender hip —far too sexy a look for a little kid. Taking the end of a string in either hand, I tugged. She didn’t object. I tugged harder. The knots unraveled, and the bikini bottom came away in my hands.

Since that day, I have pressured every one of my wives and lovers to shave, but not one of them has come close to recreating this, my first sight of a hairless pussy. So beautifully smooth, a deep-etched vertical groove between two puffs of fat. Bulging between her skinny legs, it seemed too big for her body, like the paws on a young police dog. She would have to grow into it.

“Go ahead and touch it,” she said.

But I didn’t want to touch it. I wanted to bury my face in it. I wanted to lick it and suck the whole thing into my mouth, and then I wanted to shoot my sticky load over it and watch the come roll down the lips and folds.

But one step at a time.

I started at the top of the line, slipping an ink-stained finger between the white pads. She was dry inside. I was afraid of that. Maybe this was mistake. Maybe her nudity really was as innocent as she said it was, and I was just confusing her and freaking her out. But I went on, probing gently, pushing further into the hairless cleft. The fatty puffs swelled around my knuckle like vanilla pudding, and my fingertip found the toughened lump that every girl discovers sooner or later, with or without our help.

Luckily for me, Gretchen made her discovery sooner, I happened to be there when it did. She went all dreamy. Her eyes closed. Her mouth hung open. Her knees seemed to slip out of gear, and her bare ass bounced, once. She grabbed my shoulder to keep from falling. Her upturned face fell against my chest.

“See what I mean?”

“Uhhh,” was all she could say.

I tossed her bikini bottom into the water, reached around her and squeezed her wet little butt with my free hand. She was so compact I could pinch both cheeks between my thumb and my middle finger.

“Now you pull on me,” I said. “Gently, slowly — oh, that’s it. Now push back. Now out again, like you’re pumping it. But not to hard. Yeah. See how good it feels when I touch you? That’s how good I feel. Just … uhhh … just like that.”

I pushed my hand between her legs and massaged her cunt. Soon she opened up for me: the tough, dry folds around her clit grew soft, pliable, as the slick juice seeped from her hole. The tip of my middle finger grazed her opening, and I worked it inside — not too far, she was too tight and swollen for that — but enough.

“Ohmago’,” she sighed quietly.

I ducked my head, hoping to kiss that gaping mouth, but she was too short. I settled for a peck on the forehead and a string of wet hair in my mouth. “Don’t stop,” she said. “Ohmago’ please don’stah—”

She stamped one foot, sloshing water over the lip of the pool and soaking my sneakers. Then she began to double over, slowly, dragging her face down my shirt and pushing out her butt. Her ass cheeks spread open, and I touched the tip of my ring finger to her asshole. She shuddered. At the same time, she gave my dick a jerk, and a hot geyser of come hit her square in the tummy. I got tender right away, the way I do after I come, but I let her keep pulling on me. She was having such a good time I was afraid to distract her.

A minute of this, and Gretchen couldn’t stand up anymore. She let go of my dick and lowered herself into the water. Her head rested on the lip of the pool, and she floated lazily, her ass an inch off the bottom, her arms and legs spread wide.

“Whoo!” she said finally, when she’d caught her breath. “What was that?”

“That, my sweet child, is sex.”

“Then I really like sex,” she said.

“Never knew anything could feel so good, did you?”

“Did you feel that way, too?”

“Uh huh. You see all that goop on your tummy? That's what comes out when a boy feels good.”

“Is that the stuff that gets the girl pregnant?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that.”

She swished her hips, stirring up a small tide that flowed across her nude body, left to right, right to left, and washed my come away. Bobbing in the waves, the stuff congealed into jagged white beads. If I had thought of it then, I might have read our fortune in them, the way the Romans told the future by dropping molten lead into wine. Spermo-mancy — the art of divination by inspecting drops of semen.

“Hey look, I grew hair!” Gretchen said.

“Oh, no,” I said, looking at her crotch as it peeped above the surface of the water. It was smudged all over with the ink from my hands, which did look a little like pubic hair.

“Roll over,” I said. “Let me see your bottom.”

As I expected, it was spotted with my fingerprints.

“Don’t let your mother see you like that,” I said. “If she does, I’m dead.”

“I’ll wash it off,” she said, rolling over again. “Later.”

“See ya soon?”

“I guess. OK.”

It was over that fast. She was a kid again, with a kid’s monosyllabic conversation. Something in her had to have changed, I told myself, but if it did, it didn’t show. Feeling suddenly silly and exposed, I folded my dick back into my shorts and cinched the string tight. I wanted to dash around the pool and kiss her desperately on the lips, but she had folded her arms on the rim of the pool, rested her head on them, and closed her eyes. She gave no sign she knew I was still there.

For a few more seconds I watched her ass bob in the pool and the water seep into her butt crack. But there was nothing else to say. I walked back into the murderous sun and left her there, naked and sleepy in a child’s wading pool.

II

I looked for her again for days after that, but there was no glimmer of life. The house seemed shut up whenever I passed by, although the papers disappeared regularly from the railing by the kitchen door. No one was home when I came to collect Thursday evening. I stood for a long time in the driveway behind the garage, gazing up at the darkened window of the back bedroom, which I assumed was Gretchen’s, waiting for a sign of movement. Maybe she was lying on her bed. Maybe she was naked. Maybe she was touching herself, recreating the feeling I had given her on that hot afternoon the day before.

Then, on my dawn rounds Sunday morning, I found a small brick of aluminum foil on Gretchen’s kitchen stoop. Taped to one corner was an envelope with “Paperboy from the Shoemaker’s Elves” written on it in green crayon. Inside the foil was a piece of chocolate chip – cinnamon cake, and inside the envelope were two one-dollar bills, my pay for the week, including a 50-cent tip, and a piece of paper folded and refolded into a tight, tiny square. 
Chewing on a bite of cake, I unfolded the paper as I continued down the back steps. I saw the green crayon again before I made out the words, and the thought crossed my mind that Gretchen’s mother had told her to write me some instructions for a vacation stop on the paper. 
But her mother never told her to write this: 
 
Paper Boy
I love you
Gretchen
XOXOXOX
 
… with a green smiley face under the kisses and under that a heart, filled boldly with thick green hatch-marks. 
A love note from a ten-year-old. How adorable. How absurd. She didn’t even know my name. And just because I felt her up. I should have thrown the note away and filed it under never-to-be-revealed adolescent follies. 
But during the week I found myself reading it again and again. I kept it with me all the time. I used it as a bookmark. I spread it on the kitchen table when I had lunch, and I stowed it in my back pocket when I went out on my route. I read it in bed before turning out the light, rubbing my stiff dick under the sheets. I sniffed at it, as though its waxy scent were perfume. I had memorized every stroke, every uneven grain of color the crayon left as it had rustled across the page. 
I wanted to see her again, alone, to tell her — tell her what? What do you say to a ten-year-old who has a crush on you? You say thank you, but you’re a kid and there’s nothing we can do. But that isn’t what I wanted to say at all. 
My chance came Saturday a week later. The heat had broken temporarily, and the air was less humid, though I was still sweaty when I finished my route, and my face was still smudged with ink. I was walking home, eyes cast down and my empty bag on my shoulder. When I passed Gretchen’s house, I took the note out of my pocket and read it again while gazing at her front door, like reciting a prayer before a shrine of the Virgin. 
I had turned to leave when I heard a woman’s voice calling me back.
It was Gretchen’s mom, striding purposefully down her front walk.
“Could you do me a big favor?” she said before she had caught up to me. “Please? I’ll pay you.”
“Well,” was all I said. 
“My mother just went into the hospital, and I need someone to look after my daughter for a few hours,” she said quickly. “Could you do that?” 
“Uh … sure.”
At that moment I wasn’t even thinking of Gretchen, if you can believe that. It was the Catholic school training kicking in. Someone was in need. Be helpful. Earn exit points for a soul in purgatory. 
“I wouldn’t ask except I can’t get hold of my regular girl,” she went on. “Do you know Mindy across the street?” 
She led me up the front stoop and through the front door. She charged into the living room, but I hesitated, lingering inside the vestibule. 
“I’m kind of dirty,” I said, discreetly replacing Gretchen’s note in the pocket of my cutoffs. “You don’t want me sitting on your furniture.”
“You can wash up in the kitchen. — Gretchen!” 
My love made a grand entrance, hopping down the stairs in pink corduroy shorts, pink ankle socks, and a blue tank top with an enormous appliqué Snoopy on the front. Her white-blonde hair hung wildly about her shoulders. It was parted jaggedly on one side, the result of a careless attempt she, or her mom, had made to comb it. Just an ordinary kid hanging out on a lazy summer day. I had never seen anything more beautiful.
“He’s going to look after you,” her mother said.
“OK,” she said — rather indifferently, I thought, for someone who had written me a love note. She’d probably forgotten it already. 
“I should call my mom,” I said. “She’ll wonder where I am.” 
“Oh, my, Gretchen’s mother said. “Are there any more at home like you? You’re very different from other boys your age.”
She had no idea.
I toed my off dusty sneakers in the vestibule and dropped my bag on them, and the three of us went back to the kitchen, where Gretchen’s mom gathered up her keys and purse from the table. She kissed her daughter on the lips. Then she kissed me on the cheek. Confused — and getting horny, now that the possibilities of this situation were sinking in —I thought for an instant she was coming on to me, until she said, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this.” 
And she was gone, leaving me standing by the sink and Gretchen leaning against the back door. 
Thirty-five years later, I remember every word, every look, every touch that passed between us that afternoon, in precise order. I tell myself the story every night, like a senile widower reliving his honeymoon — which, really, is what the day turned out to be. If the details have changed, they haven’t faded, and the memory of her body still lives on my skin, wordless and immutable.
She started it:
“You gonna call your mom?”
“I should wash my hands first.” 
There was a black bar of pine tar-soap in a dish by the sink. I scrubbed my hands and face, and, shutting my eyes against the stinging suds, felt around for a towel. Gretchen handed me one — a dishtowel. 
“Thank you,” I said. I handed it back to her when I was dry, and she hung it on a magnetic hook stuck to the refrigerator. 
The phone was on the wall between the cabinets and a window. I lifted the receiver off the hook and dialed. Mom answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” 
 “Hi, there. It’s me,” I said.
“Well, hello there, me Boy-o? What’s cookin’?” 
“You don’t sound a bit Irish,” I said. “But keep practicing.”
I smiled into the phone, but glanced at Gretchen while I did it. She must have thought I was smiling at her, and she smiled back.
“Listen,” I went on, “I have to do a favor for one of my customers.” 
“Why, what’s the matter?”
I invited Gretchen over with a hooked finger. She skittered across the floor in her stocking-feet, sliding the last step and bumping into me. She steadied herself by wrapping her arms around my waist. 
“Her mother’s in the hospital and she asked me to look after her daughter,” I told my mother while I rubbed Gretchen’s back. 
“How old’s the daughter?”
“Oh, Mom, she’s twenty-four. We’re going to run away together.”
My hand went down the back of Gretchen’s shorts and into her panties. 
“Don’t be funny,” Mom said. “I only meant, is she a baby? Do you have to feed and change her?”
“No, she’s about — how old are you?”
“Ten,” Gretchen said. 
“She’s ten,” I said, squeezing Gretchen’s bare behind. “All I have to do is make sure she doesn’t blow the house up.”
“What time do you think you’ll be home?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say how serious it was.”
“Well, behave yourself. And don’t take any money.”
“What if she insists?”
“You insist harder. You don’t take advantage of people.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. 
We said goodbye and hung up. Gretchen looked up at me, her chin stabbing me in my chest. 
“I got your nice note,” I said, patting her butt beneath her clothes, in appreciation. 
“What note?” Gretchen said. 
“You’re kidding, right? The one where you said you love me. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”
“Do you love me?” 
“If I said yes, would you let me kiss you?”
“I guess so.”
“Then I do,” said. 
“Say it all the way.”
“I love you, Gretchen.”
She held me tighter. I ducked my head and touched her lips with mine. All she did was giggle. 
“No, don’t,” I whispered. “This is serious.” 
And we kissed — a real, long, honest-to-God grown-up smack. No tongue, but full on the face. 
“You like it?” I said.
“You wanna see my room?” 
“It’s hard to keep your mind on one subject, isn’t it?” I said. “But I’d be honored.” 
My hand came out of her pants as she turned away. 
“You have the nicest little ass,” I said. 
And I kept my eyes on it as she led me upstairs to the back room — the one I had assumed was hers, the one above the kitchen, the one whose window I had watched from the driveway. I congratulated myself on my insight.
“This is it,” she said. “You like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
And it was. She could tell from my tone I was being honest. I was expecting a pink-ruffled canopy, a massive doll collection, and a linoleum floor gritty with dust. But the space I was standing in clean and angular, bright with indirect sunlight and furnished in a spare, Nordic manner I’ve tried to duplicate wherever I’ve lived. The floor was bare wood, a gleaming copper color, with a chocolate rug in the center striped with orange and flecked with green. In the corner, at the far end of the inner wall, was Gretchen’s bed, a twin, cloaked in crisp chenille. The headboard, dresser and student desk were all white pine, with big, dark knots.
The obligatory piece of religious art found in every Catholic bedroom hung above the desk, but this wasn’t some lacquered plywood crucifix with a glow-in-the-dark Jesus tacked to it. This was a framed reproduction of the Cowper Madonna — and I know that only because I saw the original years later at the National Gallery. 
The only clues a child slept here were the Muppets poster over the bed and a stuffed Kermit and Miss Piggy embracing as they reclined on the Gretchen’s pillow. 
“Does your mom keep it this nice?” I said.
“I do,” she said. “She says it’s my responsibility.”
“You do it very well.”
She sat down on the bed and drew up one foot to the edge, hugging her bare knee. I could see up her shorts to a white patch of underwear. She was looking at me with bright eyes, as though she expected me to make the first move. I was seriously considering it, but guilt spoke first. 
“Aren’t you worried about your grandmother?” I said.
“I don’t see her much,” Gretchen said. “She stopped talking to us after my parents got divorced. She’s kind of mean.”
“Very Catholic. I know the type.” 
Mother could be funny, but she told me once if she ever caught me defiling a girl — that was the word she used, “defiling” — I would be living on the street.
I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. Her body lost all rigidity, like a marionette whose strings have been cut, and she leaned into me, hugging me again.
“Gretchen, I … I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I got your note.”
She tightened her arms again, as she had in the kitchen. It was her principal sign of encouragement, I guessed. I touched my hand to her chin and lifted her face.
“Are you gonna be my boyfriend?” 
“Yes, I am,” I said. “That would make you my girlfriend, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah … Darling.”
“Where did that come from?”
“I just wanted to say it.”
She was playing with a grown-up word — playing, even, with having a boyfriend — the way she would play dress up in her mother’s clothes, but my heart kicked when she said it.
“When we kiss again, open your mouth a little — and relax your jaw.”
So we tried it with our lips apart. I ran my hands over her back and sides, feeling her taut body through her shirt. 
“Touch tongues?” I said.
I stuck out my tongue in a pencil-point. She did the same, and we dabbed the tips together. 
“More?” I said. 
We did it again, but this time our tongues slid across one another until out lips met. In a moment we were locked in wide-mouthed kiss. 
She needed no more instruction. Her tongue grew loose, eager. I pressed my weight against her, laying her diagonally across the bed. 
We went at it playfully, necking for what seemed a brief time but must have been nearly a half hour. Relativity: time moves slower in stronger gravitational fields. Or is it faster? I ran my hands over her sides and chest, feeling her nipples stiffen under Snoopy’s black nose. I reached down and tickled her bare knee and thigh. My fingers went up into her shorts, but I stopped at her panties. I was afraid of pushing my luck, even though I’d already felt her up once. Maybe she’d think once was enough, and the Catholic aversion to unregulated sex would rear its guilty head. 
But my dick was hard, and it hurt scraping against the inside of my fly while I humped her leg. I wanted the soft touch of her skin on mine. 
Quickly, but as unobtrusively as I could manage, I undid the button on her shorts with a deft snap of my fingers. 
She held me tighter about the neck, and her tongue swelled in my mouth. More encouragement. So I pulled down her zipper, which came open with a metallic pop-pop-pop.
Cautiously, still half scared she’d run screaming from the room, I flattened my hand against her tummy and slid my fingers under the elastic band. That bulging vulva rose against my touch. The fleshy lips parted as I wormed my way in. She was soaking wet.
“Uhhhhh,” she breathed.
 “Let’s take off all our clothes.”
She nodded breathlessly. I pulled at her shirttail. Automatically, she sat up and raised her arms, as if I were her mother undressing her for bed. The instant it cleared her fingertips, she flopped onto her back again. Her long hair fanned out on the bedspread beneath her. 
She raised her butt a little as I knelt over her and hauled her pink shorts down her legs. They joined her shirt on the floor. As they came off, she raised her knees, making a flattened Z of her body. Her feet hung in the air, and her legs parted, granting me a lovely view of the thick cotton at the center. It was molded to her swollen lips like a shell of white enamel. Slipping my hands beneath her back, I drew down the waistband. Her panties came off around her butt, then up the slanting shanks of her thighs. A hairpin turn about the knees, then down the thin, coltish calves. Finally a smaller, gentler turn around her heels, and off over her toes. Her pussy was a deep, shadowy seam, stitched tight, with a dewy sheen on each side. 
The panties had a wet gray stain on the crotch, with a yellow streak at the center, and a tiny but fresh brown spot just where you’d expect. I mimed throwing them to the floor, but behind my back I balled them up and crammed them in my pocket — a souvenir of my vacation from all morality and sense. I was damned to hell, anyway. I might as well add theft to my list of sins.
I still have them, by the way. I keep them locked, under the crayon note, in a tin reliquary that sits on a table in the corner of my living room. There’s a blue votive candle beside it, and above hangs my own copy of the Madonna.
Gretchen was wearing only her socks now. I stripped them off one by one, pausing to raise each foot to my face, kissing it in turn, licking the arches, sniffing her toes and taking them into my mouth. 
“Your turn,” she said finally.
“Oh, thank you, your highness!” 
I couldn’t bear my clothes anymore. My armpits felt hot and damp, and my dick was full to bursting. Setting her foot on the bedspread, I stood up and stripped while she watched. It felt good to get out of my cutoffs and briefs, to let my balls swing loose and my hard-on fall forward. Her eyes widened a hair as it pointed at her. 
“That is so weird,” she said.
“What’s weird about it?”
“The way it sticks out.”
“That’s not all it does,” I said. And I did that little trick where I squeeze my groin muscles, and my dick flips up and down like a light switch. 
“Oh God, that is so goofy!” she shrieked. She laughed so hard she doubled up, folding her arms and legs together at her tummy. 
“And for my next trick …” I said, and I knelt beside her on the bed and pried her knees apart, sliding my hands along the inner smoothness of her thighs. I intentionally missed her pussy and continued on to her bony chest and the solid pink nipples. I could see the giggles were going to be a problem, and I kept a straight face as I massaged her. Gradually she relaxed. Her legs came down again, and they opened into a diamond, her knees spread wide and the soles of her feet touching. And as her legs opened, her pussy-seam split, exposing the raspberry swirl inside. 
“This is going to be nice,” I said. 
I kissed her lips and began to work my way down her body with my lips and tongue, even my teeth. I paused at her neck, and again at her shoulders. She didn’t have the slightest hint of tits. Sucking her chest was like sucking a wall, but that’s what men are supposed to do with women. And she did seem to like it, cradling my head and moaning softly. 
I tongued her navel — an outie with a knot of flesh at the center — and I kissed the beautiful points of her pelvic bones. I remember thinking they formed a triangle with her navel: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Add blasphemy to the indictment. 
Again, I skipped her cunt and went on to kiss the smooth-marble inside of her legs. I crouched inside the diamond and came back up, licking one thigh, then the other, switching sides again and again as I neared the apex. 
Finally, my face hovered above her cunt, and I smelled it for the first time — a thick, complex scent like roses and coffee, earth and olives. 
I blew on it gently. 
She wriggled her ass and pushed at me, opening herself wider. I didn’t oblige her. I only fluttered my tongue above the pink glittering twists. 
Poor Gretchen was too young to know what to expect, but she was old enough to know she was being teased.
“Do something,” she pleaded.
“I am doing something,” I said. And I blew on her again and kissed her hairless outer labia. 
She moaned in frustration. I barely heard her. Her voice was soft, and the dense smell of her cunt was making me dizzy. It was becoming hard to hear, hard to see.
“Do more,” she insisted. “Come oooooooon!”
It was cruel to deny her any longer — cruel to deny myself. Brusquely I jabbed my tongue into her asshole and raked her pussy from bottom to top. 
She wailed. 
I lapped at her clit like a kitten at a bowl of milk. She raised her legs and hooked them over my shoulders, crossing the ankles behind my back. 
I found her cunt-tunnel and tried to work my tongue inside. She was so tight couldn’t get past her inner lips, but it didn’t matter. 
Gretchen’s chest rose higher with each breath, as though she were a balloon I was blowing up through the hole between her legs.
“Huh – huh – huh,” she huffed. 
I extended one long arm and touched her lips. She sucked on my middle finger like a baby.
Spit and cunt juice mingled on my lips and chin. I concentrated on her clitty now, penetrating the protective folds and mashing on the raw, swollen bud.
She was far gone, eyes clamped shut, her breath coming fast in shallow gasps. Her femoral grip grew tighter about my head, blocking my ears. Her cunt drooled on my face. I couldn’t feel anything definite under my tongue. There was no clit, no hole, no labia — nothing but a mask of hot, damp mud. I rolled my tongue in wider, sloppier circles, hoping desperately I’d catch her at her most vulnerable, pleasurable spot. 
One of her hands found one of mine, and she gripped me hard. She was surprisingly strong for a little girl. I took my other hand away from her mouth and pinched a nipple between my spit-slick finger and my thumb.
“Unnnnng,” she said, if “said” is the right word for this kind of incoherent prattle. “Cuh! Cuh! Cuh!”
She was close. I pressed my face into her cunt, adding my weight to the flopping of my tongue. 
As she arched her back, her cunt angled down, and I had to dip to stay with her. Not that she would have let me go: her legs had me in a death grip. 
Suddenly, she twisted her hips, wrenching my neck one way, then the other. It took heroic effort to hold on to her cunt.
And the noise she made sounded like “Aiiiiioowwwwwaaaaauuuuuh!” That was another big surprise from such a little girl — the enormity of her orgasm. Maybe it was so big because it was so new to her, but it took her over completely. I never came so hard when I was her age. But then, nobody ever gave me head when I was ten. 
When she was able to make marginally intelligible sounds again, they came in broken puffs. 
“Go—! Oh Go—! Oh my Go—!” 
Each word was quieter and calmer than the last. She was coming down. She let go of my hand. Her legs slid from my shoulders. 
Then, at last, a near sentence: “Darling, that was … that was …”
“Great? Wonderful? Astounding? Incredible?” 
“Yeaaahhhhh!”
And now I was aware of my own body — how my knees hurt from crouching, how my mouth felt fuzzy from prolonged contact with an oozing cunt, and more than anything, how hard and hungry my dick was. 
With an exaggerated groan, like an old man, I stretched out next to her. Kermit and Miss Piggy were in my way. I deposited them, courteously, on the floor, and laid my head on Gretchen’s pillow. 
She snuggled close. I put an arm around her, and I began to masturbate for her, the way I had for Mindy that October afternoon almost three years earlier — cradling my balls in my fingers and circling my wrist over the tip of my penis.
 “Are winding yourself up?” Gretchen asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“Does that feel good?”
 “Not as good as if you put it in your mouth.” 
“Gross!”
“It is not gross,” I said. “I did it for you, and you’re a lot slimier down there than I am.”
“Will that sticky stuff come out again?”
“If you do it right. Come on, Darling. Please? I’ll let you know when it’s gonna happen.”
I almost said “I promise not to come in your mouth,” but not even a ten-year-old would buy that.
Gretchen looked doubtfully at my cock while I played with myself, but I knew I had her. Her sense of fairness was involved. I had just made her feel better than she had ever felt in her short life. The least she could do was return the favor. 
I cut out the pleasant circular motion and held my cock upright by the base.
“Just put your tongue on it here — see, underneath?” I tapped the sweet spot beneath the head. “That’s were it feels the best.”
“Like that bump in my vagina?”
“That’s exactly it. It won’t taste like anything. Just try it.”
Gretchen, on her hands and knees, peered at my erection up close, almost crossing her eyes, like she was threading a needle. She was making up her mind. 
Slowly, her tongue emerged. It brushed the underside of my cock. 
Ahhh.
“Ith thith goo’?” she asked, her tongue fixed on my dick. 
“Uh … huh,” I said dreamily. “Verrr’ nice.” 
 “You’re funny,” she said, and licked again, more enthusiastically, broadening her tongue.
“Ah!” I sighed. “You like it when you make me nuts?”
“Uh huh.”
Lick, lick. One side, then the other. Under the head, over the head — like a Blow Pop. 
“Put your lips around it. Just around the top.” 
“Whattaya say?”
“Oh, God, please?”
“Mmmmmm.”
“That’s it … that’s it … Go down further.”
Her lips stretched around the shaft as she went down. Her hair fell around my cock, and her face disappeared behind a straw-colored curtain. All I saw was the shimmering crown of her head, with the jagged white part on the side. Her lips had almost reached my pubic hair when she gagged and pulled off.
“Too much for you?”
 “Are we being bad?” she said. 
“We’re being very bad. Very naughty. Do you wanna stop?”
“You think we should?” 
“Darling, I can’t,” I said. “You don’t have to go all the way down this time. Just move your tongue around, like I did on you.” 
She went back to her homework. To this day I can’t say which was more exciting: the feeling on the end of my cock, or the sight of a ten-year-old child making it happen. 
I jacked off as her head bobbed over my cock-knob, but she batted it away and took over herself. Such a bright girl — but then there was that grip.
“Careful, careful,” I said. “Not too hard — not too … not too … Tha’s riiii …”
I thrust my head back into the pillow as that wonderful warm feeling spread to my extremities. I writhed. I squirmed. I moaned. But I kept my eyes open. The sight of her tongue, her lips, her hair, her whole nude body was too precious to miss for a moment. 
A trace of a smile appeared on her lips. She was having fun —without the giggles. 
The best comes are the easiest, the ones that just happen without all the shoving and grunting. I was keyed up, I had no reason to hold back, and all it took was a few wet squiggles of Gretchen’s sweet tongue to bring my jism gushing to the surface. 
“Baby! Darling, that’s it! Keep doing it!” 
Violently, I grabbed her hair and tried to force her head down on my prick. It was twitching, a split-second from coming. But Gretchen was too quick for me, and much more clear-headed. She knew what was about to happen, and she didn’t want wads of sperm blowing up her cheeks. At the last second she pulled her head away and pumped me, hard. 
“OH JESUS!”
A streak of hot come flared across my body. Gretchen squeaked — from shock or delight — but she kept jacking me, pulling my wiener in every direction, and the stuff went all over. The second spurt clipped her chin. The third clung to her hair. But they were getting weaker, each one gaining less altitude than the one before, until the last little squirt merely fell from my cock and dribbled across her fingers. 
It was all very thick and creamy. I'd been a good boy that week, resisting the urge to masturbate, if I hadn't sublimated it completely. Love steels a man's virtue.
Gretchen squeezed me hard, as if trying to milk me dry, but it felt suddenly raw again, and I caught her wrist, putting an end to it. 
“That’s all right,” I said. “You can stop.”
She let go and held up her come-covered hand.
“Ick,” she said. “That’s a lot,” 
And she gave me the same mischievous half-grin I had seen that day in the garage. I must have been an amusing sight — the deluge of semen, the paralysis afterward. This new, untested male species must have struck her as a bit silly. 
“Are we all done?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

III

But my dick needed time to recharge. Plus, Gretchen decided she was hungry. If you get your ideas about men and women from sitcoms, you’ll notice a certain role-reversal here: at that moment, it was the man who wanted to cuddle, and the woman who wanted to eat. But she was the kid, and the girl, and both of them must get their way. So, after we peed and I scrubbed my come off each other in the bathroom, we went downstairs and had lunch — Fluffernutters on soft white bread (remember those?), a big glass of chocolate milk each and half a box of graham crackers. Just a romantic dinner for two.

Yes, I know. You’d rather be reading about sex than food, but I can’t help remarking on the incongruity. I was struck by it even at the time, I think. After all the day’s adult activity, we were scarfing down a kindergarten snack. Childhood nutrition wasn’t the puritanical science it later became.

We ate nude at the kitchen table. Gretchen sat on my right thigh, with her legs between mine and her toes splayed on the red-checkered floor. I loved the way her compact buttocks puffed beneath her like cushions when she put her weight on them. Between bites and sips, I talked to her about coming, and semen, and her body and mine, and I ran my fingers down her naked spine, raising goose bumps all over her.

We fed each other the crackers dipped in the milk, and she giggled as stray brown drops rolled down her chin and chest. I left one of the crackers in the glass too long, and when I raised it to her lips, the soggy end broke off and landed right on her slit.

“Ick,” she said.

“We need to clean you up.”

She offered me a napkin, but I pushed it away.

“Didn’t your mother tell you it’s a sin to waste food?” I said, and I clutched her under the arms and set her butt on the table. Then, kicking our chair away, I knelt in front of her and sucked and nibbled and licked until every speck of the mushy brown lump was gone. I was especially careful to dig out, with my tongue, any crumb that might be hiding in her tender pink crevices. You can’t be too conscientious where children are concerned.

“All clean,” I announced.

“You’re weird,” she said.

“Wanna go back upstairs?”

“Are we gonna do more sex stuff?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna do more sex stuff.”

“OK!”

She threw her arms around my neck, wrapping her legs about my waist as I stood. We lingered a while, kissing with chocolate lips and crumb-coated tongues. I held her under her butt, my fingers interlocked. Oh, she was light. Her bones were like balsa wood. I could have held her like that for hours, but my dick had come to life again. I wanted her back in bed.

“Darling!” she gasped, covering my lips and cheeks with kisses.

I carried her through the living room and up the stairs, bouncing as I went, chanting “Boing-a! Boing-a!” with my hard-on whapping at her underside.

It made her laugh, but the laughter stopped when we got to the bedroom.

I walked to the foot of the bed and laid her down on the rumpled chenille. Gretchen held me in her arms and legs, pulling me on top of her. I let go of her butt as we fell and landed on my forearms. My dick poked her hole, but it was shut tight, and the head flattened against it.

“You wanna fuck?” I said.

“Sure!” she said. “What’s fuck mean?”

How had I overlooked the Big F at lunch? I had to smile, even if it broke the mood.

“Fucking is when the boy puts his penis inside the girl’s vagina. It’s what boys and girls do when they love each other. And it feels better than anything we’ve done yet.”

“I didn’t know you could take it off.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you’re gonna put it in me, don’t you have to take it off first?” She fingered the base of my cock, searching for a button or a seam. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is funny. You’re wonderful.”

“How do you take it off? Show me!”

“You don’t take it off,” I said. “You lie back with your legs open, and I get on top of you and put it in. Or I can get on my back and you ride me like a horse and I stick it up into you. At no time does my penis ever leave my body. — Well, aren’t you going to say ‘gross!’?”

“Why?”

“It seems to be your response to everything. You said putting my dick in your mouth would be gross.”

“I think it sounds like fun,” she said.

I gave her the choice, and since we were already there, she elected the missionary position. I should have guessed it wouldn’t work. Either I was too big, or she was too small, or I couldn’t find the opening without looking. Whatever my dick was poking wasn’t it. I pushed a couple times and only ended up humping the mattress.

We tried it with her on top, but it was still no go. I held my cock up in my fist as she positioned herself above me, but as soon as she settled down and I let go, it popped out of her way.

“It’s kinda big for me,” she said.

“We need something that will make it really slippery,” I said.

I could see the light bulb go off over her head.

“Hold on!” she said, bounding out the door. I lay there pulling gently on my joint, afraid that with all the failure I’d lose my hard-on, but she was back in a jiff, carrying a huge yellow jar that contained more Vaseline than anyone could use in a lifetime.

“Perfect,” I said.

She held it out to me at arms length.

“No,” I said. “You do it.”

“I can’t open it. It’s too slippery,” she said.

It was too slippery for me, too, even spreading my long fingers across the lid. They just slid around the milled metal edge. I might have gotten soft from the distraction if Gretchen hadn’t kept me hard by taking me in her mouth — which made unscrewing the lid even more of a challenge.

Finally, I sent her back to the bathroom for a hand towel, which I laid over the jar to strengthen my grip. I wrenched at it one last time, straining with my whole arm and shoulder until — victory.

What a bright little girl Gretchen was. Without waiting for instructions, she dipped two fingers into the jar’s gaping mouth and scooped out a dollop of yellow goo, which she slathered all over my hard-on. The stuff melted, leaving a silvery sheen over the pink and purple skin and its tiny veins. She rubbed the head between her slick fingers, circling the sweet spot with her greasy thumb. I made a mental note to write the good people at Vaseline and compliment them on their excellent prod —

“Oh, fuck, that feels good!”

She could have finished me off right then, but I’d promised to teach her all about fucking, and you don’t break your promise to a little girl.

“Cut it out, you’ll make me come again,” I said. “Lie down.”

She obeyed willingly, spreading her legs, flexing her knees, tilting her pink stripe toward the window. I knelt between her legs and levered my dick against her pinprick of a hole.

Oh, shit, I’m trying to get into that? She’s a baby.

I straightened my legs, rising above her with outstretched arms, and, pressing the tip of my cock through to her inner lips, lowered myself against her.

And I glided right in.

I pushed tenderly, ready to stop at the slightest resistance, but there was none. Her baby pussy stretched to make room for me, then squeezed shut again. I moved through it like a rubber-tipped plunger through a plastic syringe.

“You like that?”

“It’s weird,” she said.

“But is it nice?”

“I guess.”

It was hard to kiss. Mortised at the loins, we couldn’t overcome our difference in height. Her hair brushed my chin. We gazed at one another across the gap and stuck out our rounded lips, but they barely touched.

“I can’t breathe,” she said at last.

I rolled onto my shoulder. She followed, folding a thin leg over my hip.

“That better?”

“Uh huh.”

It was better for me, too — easier. I rocked my ass, studying her face for signs of pleasure. I didn’t have long to wait. Her blue eyes widened. Small patches of red appeared on her pale cheeks, and they spread as my penis methodically stroked her bald, baby cunt. She inhaled deeply through her nose. She bit her lip.

“See?” I said. “There’s nothing bad about that, is there?”

“No … Uh-uh.”

“You know, you’re not a virgin anymore.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s funny — you stopped being one before you knew you what it is. A virgin is a girl who never got fucked.”

“Then virgins are stupid,” she groaned. We laughed weakly through our rising excitement.

“Darling,” she said “Oh … DARLING!”

Her legs went rigid around my hips, and she bowed her back away from me. We lay crossed at a right angle, like an open pair of scissors. I was looking up at the Muppets, and for some stupid reason, the fat bald one with glasses and no eyes caught my attention. They all seemed to be laughing hysterically.

I held Gretchen by the hips and ground my cock into her. Extending her arms, she gripped my shoulders — her hands were still slippery from the jelly — and tossed her head back in pleasure. I was looking at her extended throat and her smiling upper lip.

“Is it happening?” I asked, stupidly.

“Muh huh.”

Not the most articulate answer, but clear enough — that and the way her pelvis bucked back and forth and my hard-on waggled inside her.

It was already twitching. If I hadn’t come on her face an hour earlier I would have had no control at all. I would have spurted right then if I’d kept sliding around in that slippery tube. I froze, clenching my ass, and let the still, swollen fullness of my cock carry her over the top. And I prayed — not yet, God, please not yet. We held our breath. There was no sound — not from us, not from anywhere in the world — and for a teetering instant, it seemed, nothing on the planet was moving.

“Uh,” she grunted, so faintly I wasn’t sure I heard it.

“Uh,” she said again, still nothing but a peep, but unmistakable.

Then it poured out of her, an endless chain of grunts and gasps that grew in volume as her shoulders quaked and her ribs swelled and her cunt muscles clamped my boner.

I snatched her hands from my shoulders and pulled her to me, wrapping her in my arms. She shivered in my embrace like a wet dog, moaning and babbling into my chest: “Muhhhhhh, nananana … Nuh! Nuh! Nuh!”

When, finally, she squeaked in her tiniest little-girl voice, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I humped her filthy cunt, fast, a rapid pullout-pushback, no more than four times before a thin jet of watery come completed defilement.

Ah, Mother, you are always with me.

What happened next was almost as much fun as screwing her, but it’s harder to describe. We had calmed down, I had loosened my hold on her, and we opened a cool space between our bodies. I was trying to think of something sensitive and loving to say, when all of the sudden, she flung her arms wide in grand fashion, stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes and gave out a joyous half cry, half bleat like “Bleeaaaaaahhhhh!”

It was the most exuberant gesture of sexual satisfaction I’ve ever seen. Evidently, I was a hit.

“Oh, did you like that?”

“Yeah!” she said.

“And what did you like best about it?”

“Coming!”

“I love you, Gretchen.”

“I love you.”

We tried kissing again. This time she came off my dick a little, and we were successful.

“I wanna do it again,” she said.

“No problem,” I said.

I went to kiss her a second time, but she pushed at me with both hands flat against my chest.

“No, I mean I want to fuck again,” she said.

“Sure, whenever you want.”

“I mean now!”

“Could we have some more peanut butter first?”

We were working on our third orgasm when Gretchen’s mother called and said she’d be home in half an hour. That gave us just enough time to finish.

IV

“What did you do to my daughter?” Gretchen’s mother said.

Uh oh. Here it comes.

I was standing inside the kitchen door, making change for a five. My tongue surged with a blunt taste of metal, the way it does when I’m caught unawares by sudden danger — like the German shepherd on my paper route charging at my nuts.

How was I going to explain to this woman that I had fucked her ten-year-old daughter — twice — and that, really, it was no big deal? The girl wanted it. She loved it. That should count for something.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said.

Rule Number One: feign ignorance. Find out what it is they think they know.

“Whatever it was, I’d like to bottle it,” she said. “All weekend she was so happy — so good. She was glowing. You should have daughters when you get older. You really have the touch.”

“That’s nice to know,” I said.

“I think she has a crush on you. I don’t think. I know. You’re all she talks about.”

“And what did she say? My ego can use the boost.”

“Just how nice and how smart and how funny you are. Nothing specific.”

“Nothing specific” was good.

”She did say you played Muppets. What does that mean?”

Yes, what did that mean?

“We, uh, we just did a little scene with those dolls she has up in her room. We did the voices. I did Kermit —or I tried to do Kermit. She loves them.”

“She used to have a whole collection. I made her get rid of them. She keeps her room so beautifully. The two dolls aren’t bad, but that poster ruins it.”

“Is that where she is now?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her all week, not since our day in bed together.

“No, she’s at the shore with her father.”

Damn.

“I shouldn’t say this, but I’m relieved she’s gone,” she went on. “You can’t know how hard it is to meet a man when you have a child. Even if I can get someone to sit with her, I can’t bring anyone home or stay out overnight. You know what I mean?”

Yes, I knew what she meant. And I didn’t need to know.

“I was hoping to go out and meet someone while Gretchen was away, but with my mother still in the hospital, I can’t even do that. I’m there every day, and when I’m here, have to stay by the phone.”

“How is she doi—?”

“And I don’t even like the bitch. So it’s impossible. The pressure’s so … so much. If I could just have one. You know what I mean? Just one good one.”

“A good one —?”

“I’d pay for a good one.”

Since she started talking, I had been holding out her change to her — some coins and a few singles — and she hadn’t looked at it. Now she pushed my hand back at me.

“You keep it,” she said. “It’s not much, but I never paid you for babysitting.”

“I couldn’t take anything for that.”

I’d taken quite enough.

“I’d like to pay you more,” she said.

I stuffed the money back into my apron, and as I brought my hand out again, she caught it and guided it under her T-shirt. I’d suspected she wasn’t wearing a bra. There was no doubt now.

“We could go upstairs,” she said.

She was pretty. She looked just like Gretchen, but with shorter, darker hair, and curves.

“You could eat me,” she said, circling my hand on her tit. “And then we could fuck. Are you a virgin?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I haven’t had a virgin since high school, but I like a man who knows what he’s doing.”

“Listen, Mrs. —”

“Oh, don’t call me Mrs.”

“Listen, I’d love to. I would. And the timing is good, ’cause I’ve just read A Streetcar Named Desire. But I have a girlfriend. For the first time in my life, I can say that.”

But I didn’t take my hand from her breast. Her shirt was hiked up enough to expose the full white underside. I tightened my grip on it, weighing it judiciously. With hindsight, I’m guessing it was a B cup. I’ve never seen a B-cup breast that wasn’t beautiful.

My dick stood up in sympathy with her nipple. I had to adjust it under my apron.

“I know what that is,” she said with a smile. “You do want to.”

“More than anything. But like I said —”

“Can she do all the things for you I can? Girls your age don’t know shit about sex. About technique.”

“It’s not that. It’s just…”

“You’re in love,” she said.

I nodded, looking her in the eye. Sadly, she returned my hand to me, and tugged her shirt back into place.

“Is she in love with you?”

“She says she is.”

“She must be very bright. I can only see you with a bright girl.”

“Very.”

“Young love,” she said bitterly. “You can’t fight it. I hope she realizes how lucky she is. I hope you do.”

She kissed me tenderly and, less tenderly, nudged me out the door. I hated myself for passing up the opportunity. On a purely scientific level, it would have been an enlightening experiment in time travel — Gretchen in twenty-five years — but there were compensations. The feeling of the full, firm breast lingered in my hand, and I was brimming with virtue. As I checked the “paid” box in my notebook, I resolved to tell Gretchen I had been tested, and passed. The only question was whether to tell her where the test had come from.

Mother-daughter rivalries can be entertaining, but they can also get ugly.

V

I never did get to tell Gretchen I had passed the fidelity test. I was foolish to think I'd ever see her alone again. It's hard enough for teenagers to sneak off by themselves without their parents suspecting what they're up to. Try falling in love with a fifth-grader. Her sixteen-year-old boyfriend can't call her up out of the blue and ask her to a dance. He can't knock on the back door and say to her mother, "Can Gretchen come out and ride bikes?"

Gretchen's grandmother died not long after I groped her mother’s tit. I saw darkly dressed people arriving at the house one afternoon as I was delivering the paper. A few days later, a For Sale went up on the front lawn, and the bottom dropped out of my world. I stopped speaking to my customers, beyond the usual how-are-you-fine-thanks. Everyone noticed I wasn't my usual loquacious self. Even Mindy asked me what was wrong, but what can you say? I'm in love with a child, and she's going away, and I have no idea where, and I lie awake nights with a chasm in my chest, and my faithfulness means nothing so I should have fucked her mother when I had the chance.

"For Sale" changed to "Sold" as school was starting up again, and Gretchen's mother gave me a stop date for the paper.

But I was lucky one last time.

The Thursday evening in September when I collected my final payment, she asked me, "What are you doing Saturday?"

I wasn't all the way in the kitchen this time. I was standing on the back stoop, with the screen door propped open against my shoulder. Gretchen's mother was standing on the threshold above me, which put us eye-to-eye, and Gretchen was hanging on her hip. She went to the same Catholic grammar school I had gone to, and she was wearing the same uniform the girls wore when I was there: the plaid flannel jumper, navy knee socks, white shirt with the Peter Pan collar, saddle shoes. It's every Catholic boy's fantasy to strip those items off a Catholic girl, and looking at her, all I could think was that I would never have that chance.

"I don't know," I said. "Probably reading for school."

"Gretchen's having a sleepover with some of her friends. It's a sort of a goodbye party for her, and she'd like you to come."

"Please?" Gretchen said.

"I'm sorry, I'm not following this," I said. "You're inviting me to a fifth-grade slumber party? Should I wear my pajamas?"

"No, silly!" Gretchen said.

"Of course not," her mother said. "Just put in an appearance. Come over about seven-thirty and stay for a half-hour. You can have some pizza and leave. But she wants you there. She's been bugging me about it all week. I told you she has a crush on you. Isn't that right, Pumpkin?"

"No-oo!" Gretchen said, grinding a toe into the kitchen linoleum.

"I rest my case," Mom said. "Say you'll come. Make the poor girl happy — and get her off my back."

"I wouldn't miss it," I said.

"Happy now, Pumpkin?"

"Aw, Mom!"

I walked away whistling Mahler. Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld / Tau nach auf den Gräser hing —! I hadn't whistled in weeks.

My own mother kept saying it was "suspicious" that a divorced woman would invite me to her daughter's sleepover. She wondered aloud if Gretchen's mother had "designs" on me. She never went far wrong thinking the worst of anyone, but she seemed reassured when I reminded her that the woman’s ten-year-old would be there to chaperone.

The sun was setting and the air was cool when I arrived Saturday night, right on time, showered and shaved and nervous and dressed in what I thought of as sharp casual — pressed khakis, a blue sport shirt, and black loafers, freshly polished. God bless paper route money.

Gretchen was already dressed for bed. She greeted me at the kitchen door in a long, flowered gown. Her hair was immaculate, brushed back and held in place with a blue band that matched her eyes. I smelled coconut when she hugged me and I kissed the top of her head. I snuck a feel of her butt through a billow of flannel. She wasn't wearing panties.

Her guests — there were only three of them — couldn't wait for a look at the ogre she had brought to the feast, and they bustled in from the dining room after her.

"This is Dominique," Gretchen said, turning toward a girl who was obviously older than she was. "And these are my friends Theresa and Geraldine."

"Theresa and Geraldine," I said. "Let me guess — Teri and Geri."

"That's right! How did you know?" said one.

"Yeah, how did you know?" said the other.

"Just a hunch," I said.

They were twins, and, standing shoulder to shoulder like a pair of porcelain saltshakers, they were indistinguishable — the same lanky red hair pinned at the temples by the same tortoise-shell barrettes. The same sea-green pajamas. The same cat's-eye glasses. The same freckles.

"Gretchen says you're like a brainiac," Dominique said.

"I am not like a brainiac," I said pedantically. "I am a brainiac."

She was a snot-nosed little bitch, and I liked her immediately. She was a head taller than the others, with dark eyes and short black hair that slanted across her forehead. Of the four, she was the only one with tits, tiny but aggressively erect. Her pajama top was lollipop purple, finely ribbed, with spaghetti straps and a border of white lace that dipped like a Valentine at the center of her chest.

Below the waist, she was virtually nude. Her bottoms were nothing but a pair of low-slung purple panties with some more white lace in front, a square patch that served as a window to the skin above her crotch. I wondered about pubic hair — yes or no?

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Twelve."

"She's in seventh grade," Teri or Geri said.

"Yeah, she's in seventh grade," Geri or Teri confirmed.

"How do you know her?" I asked Gretchen.

"She lives around the corner," Gretchen said. "We walk home from school together. Isn't she pretty?"

"Yes, I must admit she is."

"Damn right I am," Dominique said.

"Not hard to shine, when you're twelve and you're hanging out with ten-year-olds," I said.

"Not hard to be a brainiac, when you're in high school and you're hanging out with ten-year-olds."

"Touché," I said.

"What's that mean?"

"It means you got me."

If the love of my life hadn't been standing there holding me in her arms, I would have peeled that purple heinie like a grape.

"Girls,” called a voice from the dining room, “bring him in here."

Gretchen's mother sat at the head of the table, an empty bottle of wine in front of her and another, half-empty, at her elbow. My father was an alcoholic, and I learned early to estimate liquor consumption at a glance. The first bottle could have been nearly empty when she started drinking, but from the glaze in her eyes and the way she hung her head, I didn't think so.

"How are you?" she said as we all came in. I walked behind Dominique, keeping my eye on her ripe young ass.

"Fine, thank you," I said.

Moving boxes stood in stacks along the walls. The breakfront behind Gretchen's mother was empty. She was drinking her wine from a plastic cup. On the table, besides the bottles, were two large plain pizzas, still in the boxes, paper plates and paper napkins, and a two-liter bottle of orange soda.

Dominique sat at the end of the table across from Gretchen's mom. The Indistinguishables sat together on one of the long sides, which left Gretchen and me together on the other. I took the chair closer to Dominique, and Gretchen boldly planted herself on my lap.

"Hm!" her mother said.

I reached around my little girl, put a slice of pizza on a paper plate for her and helped myself to one. She snuggled against my chest, squirming on top of my hardening dick, and laid her head back on my shoulder.

"Careful, Pumpkin," her mother said. "His real girlfriend will be jealous."

"Huh?" Gretchen said, turning to look at me sharply.

"He told me he has a girlfriend," her mother said. "Didn't I mention it?"

"See?" said Dominique with a note of triumph. "I told you you weren't his real girlfriend."

"Gretchen is my real girlfriend," I said. I might have been kidding, or not. If they wanted to believe me, they could. If they didn't, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't lying to them.

"Prove it," Dominique said. "Kiss her."

"We're not a show for your amusement," I said. "We don't have anything to prove to you."

"Hee hee!" Gretchen's mother said.

"See?" the older girl persisted. "If you were his girlfriend he'd kiss you."

I gave Gretchen a peck on the lips.

"That was nothing," Dominique said.

"Well, her mom's here," I said.

"Oh, that's funny," the mom said. "That. Is. Funny. Would you care for some wine?"

"Sure. I guess," I said. With all the booze my father stockpiled, I had never tasted wine, but it seemed more grownup than orange soda.

"Pizza and wine," Gretchen's mother said. "A truly class act."

She filled a cup, sloshing some wine onto the table, and shoved it toward me. It was dark red and a little sweet.

"That is a cabernet sauvignon," Gretchen's mom said.

"It's very nice. Thank you."

"Can I have some?" Gretchen said.

"Just a sip, honey," her mother said.

I held my cup to Gretchen's lips. She made a face.

"I like soda better," she said.

"Good," her mother said.

"What about us?" Dominique said.

"Yeah, what about us?" the twins said, almost together.

"No. Uh-uh," Gretchen's mother said. "The last thing I need is you telling your parents I was teaching you how to drink."

I ate my pizza and drank my wine with my left hand, putting down the pizza to pick up the wine, and putting down the wine to pick up the pizza. With my right hand, I surreptitiously rubbed Gretchen's thighs under the table. She spread her knees, hanging her bare feet from either side of my chair and giving me room to move inside her legs. I stuffed the loose folds of flannel into her crotch, and, anxious not to betray any movement, tickled her slit with one finger. To my surprise, the fuzzy fabric sunk deep, and moved smoothly across the bumps and puckers underneath. She was creaming.

Suddenly, she kicked. I couldn't tell why. She wasn't close to coming yet. She was calm again for a moment, then kicked again, and I realized Dominique was trying to play footsie with her. She’d seen the contented expression on Gretchen's face, and she wanted to get in the game, whatever she thought the game was. Little Gretchen had made the alpha-girl jealous.

"If it feels good, baby, let her do it," I whispered in Gretchen's ear. "She's being nice."

"What was that?" her mom asked me.

"Nothing," I said.

The resistance stopped. In a moment, I peeked under the table and saw Dominique's toes creeping up Gretchen's shin.

"Let me ask you something," Gretchen's mother said. "Are you close to your parents?"

"I guess so," I said. "More my mother than my father."

"Because if you're not, let me tell you. Make peace with them while you can. Because once they're gone, they're gone, and you can't bring them back. And before you know it, you're thirty-eight years old and divorced and you can't seduce a teenager with an obvious hard-on. Not even if you put his hand on your goddamn tit."

"Mah-ahm!"

"I'm serious," her mother said. "You should all learn. Make peace with your parents. Because once they're gone, they're gone, and you can't bring them back."

"You already said that," Gretchen told her.

"And I tell you, honey, I love you. I tell you right now."

"Mom, please!"

Across the table, the twins were looking at each other with that nervous, sidelong expression kids get when the adults in the room are doing something embarrassing and unintelligible. Dominique and I looked at one another the same way behind Gretchen's head.

"Well, I'll certainly think about it," I said, just to be talking. "I suppose it's hard ... losing a parent. It must bring up a lot of memories. Was she very old? Your mother ... I say, was your mother very old?"

But her eyes had drifted shut, and her chin had sunk to her chest. She seemed to be grinning.

"Is she all right?' said the twin on the left.

"Yeah, is she all right?" said the twin on the right.

"She's just asleep," I said.

"Oh, my God!" Gretchen said.

"She's gone," Dominique said.

"That was weird," said Twin One.

"Yeah, that was weird," said Twin Two.

"She'll be OK," I said. "Does she always drink so much?"

"Only since Grandma died," Gretchen said.

"So, now what? — Yeah, now what?" the twins asked.

"Listen," Dominique said, returning to the question she'd started with. "Are you really Gretchen's boyfriend, or are you just messing with us?"

"I told you," I replied.

"No, you were messing around."

"Was I?"

"Yeah, you were."

"We are truly, madly, deeply in love," I said, raising a hand in the Boy Scout salute. "I love her."

"And I love him," Gretchen said.

"Are you gonna marry her?" Geri or Teri asked.

"Yeah, are you gonna marry her?" Teri or Geri repeated.

"Yes," I said.

"Really?" Gretchen said.

"Yes, really."

"No, you won't," Dominique said.

"Why not?"

"Because you know what married people do, and she won't do it."

"And what do married people do?" I asked.

"They screw!"

The twins squealed.

"Shhhh!" I said. "You'll wake her up."

Gretchen's mother hadn't stirred, but we all lowered our voices. For an accurate impression of the conversation that followed, imagine every word spoken in a stage whisper.

"What's screw?" Gretchen asked me.

"See? She doesn't even know what it is," Dominique said.

"She knows other words," I said. "Screw is another word for fuck."

The twins tried squealing again, but they succeeded in producing only a suppressed, strangling sound.

"In that case — " Gretchen started.

"Baby, don't tell."

"Tell what?"

"Yeah, tell what?"

"We already did that," Gretchen said.

"You are so full of shit!" Dominique whispered.

"No, she isn't," I whispered back. I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but Gretchen had made the play, and as her official boyfriend, I had to back her up. "We did it, what, Baby, twice?"

"And all that other stuff."

And to prove it, we kissed — for real this time, tongues twirling for all to see. The twins watched us in fascination, their mouths twisted into a silent scream. Dominique seemed unconvinced, so I went farther: I pulled up Gretchen's nightgown and inserted my middle finger far up her twat. She was nice and wet and swollen, squeezing my knuckles from every side.

She sighed happily.

"What are they doing? — Yeah what are they doing?" the twins said. They couldn't see what was happening over the tabletop.

Dominique half-stood and leaned over.

"He's feeling her up. God! Look at this."

The twins came around the table — symmetrically, one on each end — and the three of them looked hungrily at Gretchen's shiny pink cunt as it gripped my finger.

"What's that feel like? — Yeah, what's that feel like?" the twins asked.

"It's fuckin' awesome," Gretchen said.

"She said the F-word!" the twins said, slightly out of phase, as usual.

"Shut up," Dominique said, even though they hadn't raised their voices. She was interested now, watching intently as I jiggered Gretchen's pussy.

"Are you gonna screw?"

I glanced at Gretchen's mother.

"I want to," I said. "Darling, do you?"

"Yeah," Gretchen said.

"I wanna see," Dominique said.

"Uh uh!" Gretchen said.

"I'll tell," Dominique said.

"Let them watch," I said. "Let 'em see what they're missing."

"Oo, I just came!" Gretchen squeaked.

"What's that mean?" said Tweedledee.

"Yeah, what's that mean?" said Tweedledum.

"It means she had an orgasm," Dominique said.

"What's that?"

"Yeah, what's that?"

"You don't know?" I said. "Don't you ever touch yourselves like this, so it feels really good?"

They thought about that a moment, their lips shut tight, as if they were fighting back gales of laughter. Then they said:

"Sometimes."

"Yeah, sometimes."

"Ooooo-K," I said.

From what I had seen, it was clear that whenever they did anything, they did it together.

Taking my finger from Gretchen's hole, I gathered her nightie and pulled it off over her head.

"See? We hang out naked," she said, and she fell back into my arms.

"If we're gonna do this," I said to Dominique, "I want something from you."

"Like what?"

"I'd like to see those pretty tits."

"Yeah, you wish."

"Yeah-eah!" Gretchen said. "You have to."

"Come on, Dom — Yeah, come on Dom," said the twins.

Rolling her eyes contemptuously, as if to say, "Fuck you all," Dominique sloughed off her top. Her young buds were lovely — high and roundish, with puffy, 3D nipples like cones of brown sugar. I couldn't think of a single smart remark.

"Speechless, huh, Kid?" Dominique said.

"Actually, yes," I said. "They're beautiful."

That threw her. She wasn't expecting a sincere compliment, but I ruined the moment by reaching out to touch her. She jerked away from me.

"You see with your eyes, not with your hands," she said.

"Hey, what about mine?" Gretchen said.

"Yours are going to be the most beautiful breasts that ever were," I said.

"Make him take his pants off," Dom said.

"She doesn't have to make me do anything," I said. "All she has to do is ask."

"Darling," Gretchen said, to prove the point, "would you please take off your pants?"

"Gladly, Darling."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"See?" I said.

"Oh, puke," Dominique said.

"You wanted proof," I said.

The five of us moved a few steps into the living room, where there were more boxes piled up, and dark squares on the wallpaper where pictures and mirrors had hung for years. Teri and Geri threw themselves into a corner of the sofa, holding hands tightly and crossing their legs together. Dominique stood too close to Gretchen and me, and I seized the opportunity to cup a hand over one of those high little titties.

"Hey!" she said, jumping back. "No fair!"

I pulled my shirttail out of my pants. “How many females have I exposed myself to in the past four years?” I thought. It should have felt routine, but this audience was the most appreciative ever: redheaded twins, the hottest pubescent sexpot I had ever seen, and Gretchen, darling Gretchen, the blonde ten-year-old I had just promised to marry.

Gretchen made herself useful, though whether her usefulness was for my benefit or her friends' wasn't clear. She knelt in front of me and took off my shoes and socks while I stood on one foot, then the other. She opened my belt buckle, unzipped my khakis and pulled them down with a two-handed yank, along with my briefs.

Four sets of eyes zeroed in on my hard-on.

"You guys wanna see something cool?" Gretchen said.

"Like what?" Dom said.

"Watch his face."

She was right: my features went slack as she closed her mouth delicately over the tip of my cock. Her tongue felt huge against the sensitive underside, as if it (her tongue, that is) were swelling in her mouth. It (her tongue) circled and rolled and surged in a continuous motion that nearly dropped me to the floor.

I moaned, still in a whisper.

"He likes that!" Dom said.

Gretchen had not been nearly so expert our first time together.

"Have you been practicing?" I asked her.

In reply, she only screwed her eyes up happily and grinned — as much as she could grin with a mouth full of dick. Her jaw seemed to come loose from its hinges as she took me all the way in.

I couldn't stand up anymore, and somehow, Gretchen managed to keep me in her mouth as I crouched, then unfolded again, stretching out on my back. I was lightheaded, tingling all over, and it crossed my mind that any girl my own age doing this to me would have had a good laugh at my vulnerability and helplessness. Not Gretchen.

"Get his pants off," Dom said.

They were still bunched around my feet. Gretchen took her mouth off my dick and helped Dominique drag them away.

"You want to be on top?" I asked her. "They'll see better."

"Yeah, OK," she said. She stood astride my hips and squatted over me. Her pussy opened as she descended, and her clit emerged from its fleshy whorls like landing gear.

"You want to get the Vaseline?" I asked.

"I don't think so," she said. "I'm really wet."

The spectators gazed in silent awe as I held up my cock for her and she lowered herself onto it. The inner lips expanded over the head, and the shaft was lost in the widening pink ring.

And there it was again, the most extraordinary sensation I have ever felt — a tight sleeve wrapped around a spindle of unimaginable pleasure. Gretchen sat upright, keeping my dick upright. We barely moved, letting the ecstasy build gradually but inexorably.

Half smiling, she raised her fists above her head and twitched her little butt like she was dancing in a stripper's cage. If she had had tits, they would have stood high and flattened against her chest. As it was, her coral nipples grew in diameter almost imperceptibly.

I couldn't see the twins, and Dominique was standing over my head. Her face looked upside down. She tugged on one nipple, stretching it like a rubber band. Her other hand was balled up in her panties. She was obviously enjoying the show.

I caught her eye and tapped my lip with one finger. She only looked at me quizzically. I stuck out my tongue and wiggled it at her. She still didn't get it. On the third try, I extended an arm, touched my middle finger to her darkened crotch, and, drawing an invisible line through the air, brought it back to my mouth.

At last, she understood. She shed her panties quickly and climbed on my face like she was mounting a bicycle.

The answer to the pubic-hair question was yes. A thin line of it clung to her outer labia, like a fuzzy black caterpillar was crawling out from between her legs. It split open as she settled on my mouth. Her ass cheeks separated, too, and for the next few minutes, all I saw was a brown rosette with a faintly sickening odor.

Gretchen and Dominique leaned into each other, forming a lopsided A-frame over my chest. I wasn't sure, but I think they put their arms around one another. They might have been kissing, or not, but they were definitely getting into it, murmuring and grinding their cunts onto my face and cock. Using me as a tool for their pleasure turned into a bonding experience, a girl thing. I didn't matter to them at all at that moment, except as the big oral and penile stimulant they were both sitting on. But who cared? It was a job I could live with, if I didn't suffocate.

I nuzzled Dominique's swampy hole, while Gretchen's creamy cunt enveloped my cock. It was hard to fuck her: flat on my back, and weighed down by two girls, I couldn't move my ass enough to push into her. She did all the work. And she did fine.

I reached up, looking for something to hold on to, and I found Dominique's pliant tits. I tweaked them, stroked them, held them — all backwards — until Gretchen turned possessive and invoked her rights as girlfriend: she tore my hands from Dominique and laid them on her own, flat chest, where they belonged.

I admit, I was being a prick, plighting my troth to one girl and feeling up another. But in my defense, let me say — well, Dominique had very pretty tits.

And then Gretchen took hold of them herself, which hardly seemed fair.

Dominique was the first to climax. Her body stiffened on my face, and she helped herself along by clapping her fingers to her clit. Her nails jabbed my lips and chin over and over as she wanked herself. She sent me home with scratches and a swollen lip I couldn't explain, but she was a girl in the throes of an orgasm, and she could hardly be expected to care about my comfort. Finally she rolled away, still masturbating, her ass thumping the carpet, clearing my view just in time to watch Gretchen come.

My girl trembled from her shoulders to her butt, and her face took on that ecstatic, inward expression I remembered from our first time together — eyes closed, mouth wide open, her breathing shallow and shaky. Free to move again, I pushed from my ass, probing her slick cunt, and finding more room for my dick than I thought she had in there.

"Motherfucker," I sighed.

Her cunt muscles clenched my penis like a fist. I pulled out halfway, loving the drag of her vaginal canal on the over-sensitive head of my cock. Then I went firmly back in. A few repetitions, and the burst of semen began to build. Honestly, I hadn't jerked off much at all since I fell in love with Gretchen, and I had a lot of come stored up. It poured from me in thick clots.

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

"Uh huh," Gretchen replied. “Uh huh!”

At some inarticulate level, we were in complete agreement.

When the waves of ecstasy had passed us by, she lay with her head on my breastbone, drooling contentedly like a slumbering baby, her eyes closed, her fingers curled beneath her chin. Precious.

"How about you?" I said, turning to Dominique, but I didn't get an answer. Her hand was frozen on her cunt, and she was staring over Gretchen and me at something that astounded her.

"What?" I said.

In reply, she only tilted her head back, pointing toward the sofa with her chin. I wrenched myself around, careful not to shake my lover too much, and I got an eyeful, too.

"Baby, look," I whispered. Gretchen lazily raised her head.

The twins, whom we'd forgotten about, were Frenching on the sofa. Their pajama tops were unbuttoned. One had her pants off. The other's hung below her knees. Arms crossed, they clawed one another's cunts in a frenzy.

But it was their love-talk that really dumbfounded us. They repeated one another's names, trading them back and forth until their individual identities, already fragile, blurred and ultimately vanished.

"I'm Teri," said one.

"I'm Teri," said the other.

"You're Geri," said the first.

"You're Geri," said the second.

"I'm Geri," from the first.

"I'm Geri," from the second.

"You're Teri."

"And you're Teri."

"I'm Geri."

"And I'm Geri."

And so it went, as they kissed and pawed each other in front of three astonished onlookers. The second pair of pajama bottoms was kicked to the floor, and they wrapped themselves into a 69, Teri/Geri on top of Geri/Teri. Their heads, tongues, and lips moved in unison, or maybe, like the way they talked, one followed the other by a split second. It was hard to tell as I glanced from one set of head and ass to the other, but it goes without saying their orgasms were simultaneous, and of precisely the same intensity. To this day, I believe each felt the other's climax as much as her own.

"Oh. My. God," Gretchen said.

"Something tells me they've done this before," I said.

"Yeah,” Dominique said. “They are way too into each other."

"How can you be friends with them?" I said. "How can anybody be friends with them? They don’t have room for anybody else."

"I just am," Gretchen said. "It's like being friends with one."

"This is better than TV," Dominique said. "Gretchen, I like your boyfriend. He's cool."

"High praise!" I said.

From the dining room came a groaning sigh. A chair creaked, and a bottle fell over and clattered on the table.

"Gretchen?" came a hoarse voice.

"In here, Mom!"

They were the first words any of us had spoken at full volume since I had shushed the twins, and they shattered the mood like glass. Dominique and the twins grabbed their clothes and flew upstairs. Gretchen stood up, sliding away from my dick, dripping semen and pussy juice on my stomach and balls. Her nightgown was still where I'd left it, wadded up under the dining room table, and she couldn't get to it without exposing herself to her mother. But apparently that wasn't a problem. Without a trace of hesitation, she walked naked through the archway, made a sharp left turn, and was out of my life forever.

"You OK, Mom?" I heard her say.

"What time is it?"

"Almost nine. You should go to bed."

"You don't have any clothes on."

"We were playing a strip game," Gretchen said. Clever girl.

"That figures," her mother said. "Where's your boyfriend?"

"He went home."

Not so clever, that one. If she had said, "He went to the bathroom," I could have run upstairs after the others and covered up at my leisure. But my continued presence in the house didn't jibe with little-girl strip games. I had one way out, and that was through the front door.

Quietly as I could, I stuffed my clothes and shoes under my arms and fled naked into the cool night air. Gretchen kept talking to give me time. It's a miracle her mother didn't hear my belt buckle clank, or the front door open, or the storm door close. Or maybe she did, and, with a headache and a bellyful of wine, she never guessed what was going on.

I dropped my clothes beneath the front window. The air felt delicious on my balls. I lingered a few minutes with my hands clasped behind my head, savoring the breeze. I was tempted to go for a nude walk around the neighborhood, but I'd save that for another time. I had challenged fate too much for one night. And Mother would be waiting up for me. So I got dressed in the dark and went home.

Next morning, I delivered my last Sunday paper to Gretchen's house. Monday, she was gone. The moving van was outside when I went past on my route, and my girl and her mother were nowhere to be seen. The people who moved in next didn't subscribe to the paper, even though I knocked and tried to sell them on the idea, like the enterprising businessman I was. Maybe they sensed my heart wasn't in it. I couldn't bear the thought of standing in that kitchen again, asking for money, and not seeing Gretchen's teasing smile.

I kept the paper route until the following summer, but it gave me no more riotous orgasms, no more glimpses at the female nude, young or old. My sex life remained dormant until college, and it has never been so good again.

The End

© 2012 by Jacqueline Jillinghoff