"Charly the Yard Guy" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith1@swbell.net). Yard-guy sex is actually a fairly popular topic when women meet in sewing circles, at the hairdresser's, or even at PTA executive meetings. There's something about a muscular young man in a sweaty tee-shirt that outlines and emphasizes those muscles that brings out the libido in the everyday housewife. I don't personally know anyone who has actually fucked her yard guy, but I have heard some wild claims and have had lots of friends who have incorporated the yard guy into fantasies later in the evening.

Come to think of it, I DID make love to my yard guy just last week, but I had him take a shower with me first to get rid of all those little pieces of grass and herbicides that aren't really all that sexy. Of course, the mitigating circumstance in my case is that I am married to my yard guy.

Anyway, in the present story Charly the Yard Guy is actually Charlene the 16-year-old Yard Girl, who takes over the job of doing extensive yard work for the 35-year-old neighbor when her brothers can no longer do the work. She quickly becomes more than a yard worker. Although the older man tries to resist the relationship, they fall in love and move swiftly along to a tender and happy ending.

There are people who would label this a pedophile relationship, but that's a silly oversimplification. I'm not sure about this (in fact, I'm just making it up), but I think the odds for happiness would actually be in FAVOR of a really responsible and sensitive 16-year-old who wanted to develop a mature relationship with a 35-year-old man - as long as the man is also a mature, sensible man rather than a horny asshole. The main reason to discourage such relationships is that the result would be a tremendous loss of worthwhile women from the dating pool for horny 16-year-old boys who couldn't compete with the sophistication and sensitivity of their more mature competitors.

If my daughter finds this story, I want to remind her that not all that many middle-aged men who flirt with teenagers are as wonderful as the guy in this story. I would also like to remind the guy that statutory rape is still a punishable offense that is prosecuted in most jurisdictions in the western world.

Some people are put off by stories about taboo subjects. It's important to keep in mind that people are interested in taboo subjects because to some extent these topics ARE fascinating and attractive. There have been numerous great books in literature and award-winning films in which the "forbidden relationship" plays a tantalizing part. What will happen when the strong-willed vivacious southern belle falls in love with a man who is married to someone else or with a man whose allegiance to the South is seriously questioned? What will happen when Gregory Peck is assigned to an air base in England during World War II and faces the extraordinary danger of probably dying in battle far away from his wife at home while he is in close contact with a beautiful British woman? What will happen when a widower who is ready to marry the beautiful love of his life and resume his normal existence is suddenly confronted by his former wife, who wasn't dead after all but has merely been the victim of amnesia?

Blindly denying that these stories are interesting does not reduce their attractiveness. In real life, situations like these may cause really serious complications and emotional problems. I used to be amazed (watching reruns, of course) at how much stress Little Joe used to be able to tolerate on the Ponderosa. The poor guy had a fiancee die at least every fourth episode, his parents or brothers kidnapped almost weekly, and he had amnesia at least twice a year. The poor little kid on The Rifleman had it even worse: each week, a group of homicidal maniacs would rob a bank, beat up his father, kidnap him (I think his name was Marcus), and repulse his father (Lucas) the first time he tried to rescue him. Then these assholes would be in position to kill both Marcus and Lucas and sometimes also Micah plus an itinerant neighbor, when the Old Man would whip out his rifle and kill all six of the bad guys on the spot. In real life, that's stress; but that's what fiction is for.

Getting back to sex, I think it's a really bad idea for a man to get into a relationship with a sexy nymphomaniac who eventually refuses to let go of him and boils the family rabbit on the kitchen stove or for a woman to become a call girl that gets sent on a shopping spree by a handsome rich guy with whom she eventually falls in love. It's not all that likely that such stories would have happy endings in real life; but "Fatal Attraction" and "Pretty Woman" are really good movies. Worrying about the moral ambiguity of these movies simply makes it less likely that you will enjoy them or profit from the vicarious experiences they convey.

So if any of you assholes out there decide to seduce my teenage daughter, you can assume that your life will become stressful. I'll grant the POSSIBILITY that she might become happy with a guy twice her age; and in fact, if things happened to her just the way they happen in this story, that would be just swell. But I'm going to bet on her having a lot of fun with kids her own age and marrying a guy I consider to be a kid and all that neat kind of crap.