Sunday in the Park
(with Segway)

[M/b, mast., rom., voy.]

This story is not the result of any tie in, commercial or otherwise, with anybody or any company.

by Feather Touch


	“Hummin’ along / singin’ a song / side-by-side.”  

       Sure, it was old-time schmaltz and Allan Bentley winced at the doggerel; abut as un-hip as you could get, and he a young turk at the hot and getting hotter Ponds Agency, yes, Madison Avenue.  But it was humming and the wheels were side-by-side, so the foray into nostalgia was perhaps allowable under the circumstances.  And in a way it was understatement, his personal transporter actually sang rather than merely humming like any old machine.  It’s two reduction-gear trains were tuned exactly an octave apart, a little good news because in designing a marketing campaign for the five thousand dollar scooter he needed all the help he could get.
       
       He crossed into Central Park and leaned forward to let the machine run along a little.  Not exactly a sprint, but it did lope along at a soft run, no panting, fuck, if it only wasn’t so g-d expensive.  He searched out a hill, topped it, then turned about to descend, leaning back slightly.  As promised in the “Amazon” review, an alpha wave was attached to the maneuver, the B windings of the electric motors restraining a runaway like the hand of Zen.  At the bottom, he kicked the scooter through another U-turn and repeated the climb and descent.  Didn’t take long to get used to that and his creative mind flashed on municipalities on flat terrain building, at taxpayer demand, artificial hills in appropriate areas so the voters could share the experience.  (Skateboarders didn’t have it so good – like the teen in Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” they were “too young to vote.”)  Grr.  Why didn’t it cost five hundred bucks and make his job as project director easy or at least realistic.  The twenty-five year old had recently vacationed on the barrier reef in Belize; in the local town brand new Chinese bicycles could be purchased for less than a hundred U.S. dollars.  Five for five hundred dollars, and the machine he was riding cost as much as fifty.  And what did it amount to?  Two electric motors, good ones, no doubt about it, but mass-producible on automated assembly lines; logic boards; weren’t they a dime a dozen in the era of chip shooters that cycled faster than sewing machines?  The ersatz gyro stabilizer had no moving parts and looked, at least from the drawings, eminently mass-producible.  Maybe the batteries had some exotic chemicals, but, again, they probably took a few man-minutes each to assemble and inspect.  Wheels and chassis?  Sure, allow a couple of hundred bucks (two bikes) and throw in another hundred just for good measure.  The total should not be a base price of $4,950.00; not half of it, not a third of it.  What was wrong with these people, did they want to amortize the development costs in six months?  Didn’t GM pay for a new facility over twenty years?  I mean the thing cost half as much as one of their lesser cars, and could fit in the trunk.
       
       Advertisers don’t run companies, they sell them.  Allan knew that but it was frustrating, in the main because the machine was neat; a flat-out kick.  Sure, a few first-on-the-blockers would buy them at the price, they’d been following the design since it was first hyped as “It” in the late Nineties.  (Of course, the initial buzz was that it would have a new-generation power supply and be able to climb stairs, neither of which had turned out to be true, and those deficiencies would limit its adult-toy appeal.)  But would big profits off a few sales turn out to be a workable business model?  The run-up costs had been reported at sixty million dollars so it seemed unlikely the playboy market would satisfy a v.c. beast of such a scale.  Of course, his mind ranged, if Segway went belly-up after selling a few hundred or thousand units, they’d become legendary collectibles overnight.  Keep the box and bill of sale.
       
       Practical considerations:  How usable was it?  Not very, Allan surmised.  Even the websites commercial video emphasized mail deliver and security guards.  That was discouraging.  How safe was it?  Not very, what with an unalienable proclivity to pitch a rider onto his or her face, so that was a bummer when it came to designing a marketing strategy.  Nuts-and-bolts targets of any campaign were, a, few and far between, and, b, probably already knew all the tech details.  The glamour aspect?  That was where you would get a few sales – the coolness factor – but probably not enough to support a garage and basement organization, much less an industrial center with the now-obligatory “campus”.  Derivative Web sites?  Pretty good and quite active.  Legality?  Very good news.  San Francisco had reflexively banned use of the transporter on public sidewalks.  A significant backhanded by a city of morons.  Similar ventures?  Best not even to think about Iridium and a long list of other boondoggles which had survived endless vetting by focus groups and credentialed consultants, only to fall flat as a fritter in the marketplace.  In fact the reason he’d grown hot for Dean Kamen as a client was the very dearth of anything resembling “new” on the horizon.  Comdex and the other shows were shadows of five years ago, the recently proud (and permanently spectacular) innovations, now waffling between appliances and commodities.  
       
       Well, the client had been granted, it was his baby.  He had to free his mind of all he’d learned – all conventions and strictures – and, for once in awhile, really think.  People liked to trash advertising, and perhaps some of it was excessive and repetitious, but it made the wheels go ‘round.  If early computer games had been sold in white boxes with stenciled titles like “F-16 Strike Eagle” and “Silent Service”, they’d have laid down and died.  But the marketing had followed scale models; beautiful packaging art.  Those RGB antiques had been dismal, if that, to try and play, but the boxes were irresistible; people bought them, and, lo-and-behold, twenty years later the graphics of the games couldn’t be approached by the packaging artwork.  Marketing had been the magic genie to such an extent it was impossible to overstate its importance in inspiring a new commercial dynamic that had, in all probability, saved the industrialized world since about 1989.  The truth of the matter was, a handful of artists had done more to engender the digital revolution than any dozen engineers and entrepreneurs (with a few obvious exceptions).  And now that silicon pup was an old dog and unless a new hound came along to energize the hunt, a total collapse was a moral certainty.    Marx had said capitalism would be brought to its knees by the vagaries its hit-or-miss nature, and even if he was wrong, what a bleak future it was gong to be without something new out - there.  It was a lot of responsibility for a twenty-five year old, but then tulips had once sparked a European economic frenzy – freaking flower – so there was a note of hope to be found in history.
       
       Total intellectual challenge.  The ephemeral hook.  Joe Isuzu with the bullet in his teeth.  Not art that intrigued, but art that hammered, preferably against the back of a blade with a keen edge.  Just how would one go about creating the like?  MTV had a lock on fancy camera angles and fire-at-the-zoo videonastics, and was hip even a good bet – hadn’t it sort of been done? tiny glasses and florid interior paint schemes – was it up to the task of getting the price way, way down so there’d be something for others to share in the following revolution?  Was there a single politician in Washington with the wit to see the government should buy that patents and place the machine and allied technologies in the public domain?  (Had the government ever done so?  Purchased a worthwhile technology through eminent domain, if necessary, and released it in the name of public interest, exercising the same rights which allowed them to mandate a national park?) 
       
       That was pipe-dream stuff, but the young writer sang along, lost in a machine that didn’t hum.  He left the pond area and moved on into the park looking for steeper grades.  If the whole world depended on it, there had to be a way, and if he was the reddest, hottest rookie in the city, he had to, a, find the door, and, b, open it.  Twenty million in five years?  And if a number like this were approached, a massive number, what would be the unintended consequences?  Already devotees in Seattle were writing of using the Segway ht in place of their cars at savings of six hundred dollars a month.  Times twenty million?  But there was another layer.  The Freeways were congealing to the point of economic catastrophe and sealing off thousands of surface streets in the process.  If something didn’t come along to free them, the existing infrastructure’s six hundred a month would no longer be applicable, just like breathing.
       
       “I’ll have to say ‘hum’,” he mused, trying to think of a useful synonym to describe the delicious sound of the twin gear drives.  To “Warble” along?”   Accurate enough if you throttled up and down, but otherwise ridiculous.   “Sing along/”  Sure, any time it rained.  “Melody along?”  Nah.  “Purr” was better, but everything did it, and “whine” certainly had no connotations to write home about.  “One the other hand,” his train of thought continued, “there aren’t many synonyms for walking, either.  ‘Skipping’, once in awhile for kids, but everyone else got to plod., words like ‘saunter’ and ‘pace’ hardly appropriate for what almost everyone did almost every day.  ‘Grind’ would be more like it, ‘trudge’ or ‘slog’.  ‘Hum’, or maybe ‘whir’.”  It was an obstacle between home plate and first base, having to develop a strategy without the all-important buzz word.  A “name that sound” contest?  Great, for about three years (well, duh’uh, people had to hear it, first) in the future.  By that time he’d be writing his novel, having left behind either a program his colleagues could carry on, or nothing worth picking up by anybody for any reason.
       
       Did the machine appeal to him as poet?  Lean front, lean back, shift from side to side, whatever the note of its music, it was a duet by which to glide. Turn left, turn right, or turn yourself ‘round and ‘round; how long before your dreams awaken you with its sound?  Go to work, go to play, go when you used to stay home; add a light, front and back, to deal with patches of gloam.  Clear the air, ditch the car, live half as free as a bird; invent a you beyond yourself; ‘Segway’ is the word.  Of course it could also end: become a Segway nerd.  Well, if the shoe fit, at least he wouldn’t wear it out.
       
       It did past muster.  Seventy-two volts into an 8,000 rpm motor in wimp clothing; hell, tricked, it would really haul.  As good as it was, it could be better.  For example, and he’d figured this out before he reached Central Park, a strap of batteries.  It could me mounted on the control column or worn around the waist, taken in to recharge, and would have compartments for sundries; one step further, a backpack with perhaps twenty pounds of batteries (and conventional storage capacity); it would add ten miles at least.  One step further.  An all-weather greatcoat, again, with batteries sewn into the lining.  Last step would be a little trailer to haul a fifty pound battery.  Not your father’s electric scooter.  Oops, next to last step.  The ultimate would be no batteries at all.  A wand sticking up from the control panel that would connect with overhead voltage.  Wow.  Two-twenty.  Three times normal.  Drag racing would become an option.  Sure, once they were selling in the hundreds of thousands and millions.  Climb mountains, take it scuba diving, trick it half-way to the moon.  But first, sell, sell, sell.
       
       It can come as a thunderclap, it can come as a tickle in the night; for the vast majority, it never comes at all.  Blinding or niggling, we call it inspiration, and though it’s documented at being ten percent of the cause, without it there is no cause.  Do we feel it’s about to fall like a ton of brick smack-dab on the head of young Mr. Bentley?  Let’s watch over his shoulder as he crests a knoll in a remoter area of the park.  His eyes come to the level of the soft peak, he crests it, leans back, and stops, the gears hardly making a sound as his chariot balances in place.  He’s just taking his shirt of, not our poet and nascent genius, but a young teen boy sitting half way down the grassy bank.  Two tons of bricks.  The magilla, squared.  In what, three seconds? 
       
        For a full minute Allan let it wash over him and the whole while he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t pumping enough voltage into his machine to get him to Chicago.  Then the boy folded his shirt neatly, and, placing it behind his head, lay back.  
       
       Had he been right about walking or had he been right about walking?  Walking, he’d give the youth wide berth, careful not even to make eye contact, anything else could represent nothing be the most common of common, and how tired a beauty like this child must be of that hustle (plus, there was a place for it, but not out here).  Maybe those gears did sing even in the sunshine.  Allan leaned forward, descended rapidly, and pulled to a dramatic stop two feet from the flank of his answer to everything but a prayer.  “They invented it to get lost on,” he said to the bare-chested youngster.
       “Well,” the boy responded, “I hope they messed up, because it would be a shame to see the last of it before my eyes are focused.”
       “No need to hurry,” the writer responded, “I’m just out circling around, brainstorming something, yes, about the machine, and thought I’d stop and say Hi.”
       “It can even balance on this hill,” the thirteen year old said, and introduced himself as Pete Franklin.  
       
       “It’s stock, which is a drag,” Allan said, “but it can still back back up the grade.”
       “Stock is always a drag,” Pete agreed.  He’d been opening a thick paperback but put it aside.
       “But it’s great for little kids,” Allan said, stepping off his transporter and nodding at it: “Knock yourself out.”  
       Nice to see reflexes like that in a bookish kid.  “Will you hold me for just a minute, you know, because of the grade?” Pete asked.  Allan nodded and held out a hand.  The thirteen year old mounted carefully but deliberately and the young executive moved close behind him, his hands lightly on Pete’s flanks.
       “It’s very natural,” the youth said, swaying tentatively for and aft and sensing the electronic response.  “Try pushing me a little,” he suggested after a minute.  Allan did and there was the soft hum of the machinery as it adjusted itself.  “Now back,” the boy prompted.  Was he being cute?  The machine surged to the rear twice as fast as it had moved down grade, and in a moment the child’s bare back was pressed firmly against the older male.  Allan’s arms went fully around the slim, young teen’s waist, at which point the student seemed to have mastered the foot operated sensory switches, for he remained parked in place.
       “Is this okay?” Allan whispered, assuring himself the boy wasn’t where he was against his will.
       “Is it okay with you?” Pete whispered back.
       “Yes,” the young man said.
       “It is with me, too,” the youngster replied, “and if anyone comes along, you’re just teaching me how to ride, even though it might look funny what with your being so overdressed.”
       “I wasn’t born this way,” the older friend observed, shucking his shirt but taking a moment to fold it neatly and place it close beside the garment of the young teenager.
       “Sorry I’m such a slow learner,” Pete then said, easing the machine delicately to the rear.
       “Sorry I’m such a bad teacher,” Allan responded, his hands now openly on the slightly heaving chest of the stripling.
       “I guess we were made for each other,” the boy said.
       
       “If not, maybe we can fake it,” Allan responded.
       “I’m not sure,” Pete whispered, “I could be running around on the world’s last invention, and I don’t want to move.  I don’t think I could fake that.”  He had a point.
       “Same boat here,” Allan said, “I’ve just had the world’s greatest idea, and I should be half way home to write it all down.”
       “Then we must owe ourselves some kind of hallelujah,” the cutie said, not intentionally giggling enough to trigger an outright rape, but coming as close as was healthy.
       “Has this happened with you before?” the marketing genius, asked, now openly fondling the lithe child squirming against his bare chest.  “And you definitely don’t have to answer than if you’re not comfortable with creepy quizzing.”
       “You seem more interested in my brains than my body,” the boy responded, “and I don’t find that creepy, not at all.”
       “Ya,” Allan noted, “I guess there haven’t been many kids in a better position to creep off than you are.”  Pete nudged the transporter back a few inches. 
        “I want to try something,” he said, carefully lifting his hands from the handle bars and reaching back behind his head to link his finger’s behind the older male’s neck and arching his back in welcome.  Allan responded.  Slowly he pulled the hundred-pound boy backward, stepping back as the machine moved in his direction.  “There are some trees just over the rise,” he whispered to Pete, “because I think it might be hard to convince a Tyne Daily type of the pedagogical nature of our relationship.”
       “I’d say lead on, but you’re going backwards,” the chipper kid observed as Allan balanced him in place for a moment while he retrieved their shirts.
       “I don’t think you’d need a degree in divinity to know we were back-sliding,” the athletic twenty four year old agreed.  The machine wheebled in shorts bursts and in a couple of minutes they were on the buff. 
       
       “What time do you have to be home?” Allan asked, checking his watch.
       “Not ‘till seven,” the boy answered. 
       “Cool,” the man said, his friends pumpkin-hour almost five hours off, “you have that kind of brain.”
       “I’m everlastingly glad you noticed,” Pete responded with a blush, suddenly a little shy at being so openly noticed.  Allan gave him a squeeze.
       “Go on,” he said, “run around a little.”
       “Wouldn’t it be wicked to play hide-and-seek on?” Pete asked in response.  
       “Hide and seek with five thousand dollar scooters,” the young man laughed, “how New York can you get?”  He gave his friend a gentle shove and the thirteen year old motored off, quickly finding the maximum speed on the downgrade, then weaving around on the grassy plain below before climbing again to the ridge.  “It’s way wild going down,” he panted, “like some melodramatic camera move in a schlocky movie.”
       “Here,” Allan said, pulling a small music player from his pocket, adjusting it, and handing it to the boy.  Already  balancing instinctively, the boy pocketed the device in his cargo shorts and plugged in the ear pieces.  “’White America’,” he yelped happily, and was off on another Hollywood take.  Allan dropped to the grass and leaned back on his elbows, visions of billions dancing in his head.  And, god, it would be.  Get the price down, way down, and it would reprise the Nineties; hugely more for everyone involved, with once again, lo the poor consumer figured into the equation.  (Big business or small, everybody’s budget is your budget.)
       
       Slower this time, that was nice to see.  He stopped half way down the six percent grade and turned ninety degrees to the left, then experimented with maneuvering on the incline, operating the treadle sensors with his left foot while he kept his right on the fender, ready do check a fall.  Not even close.  He finished the descent, then turned and powered back up the hill.  Allan stood and the boy pivoted, then backed carefully into him, whispering: “hallelujah.”  They continued their up-to-date mating dance, backsliding into the copse of trees verging the meadow.  Allan put down the kickstand and Pete dismounted.
       “Hi,” the older male said.
       “Hi,” the boy responded.
       “It was a free ride,” Allan reminded his young friend, “you don’t have to stay.”
       “I’d like to,” Pete said, his older companion rejoicing in the simple response.  Bright and sassy was fine, up to a point, but there was nothing to beat a quiet one: what they call a keeper.
       “I should tell you this was an experiment,” the writer confessed, “I was using the machine to see if it would attract you.”  The found a fallen three, sitting bare-chested facing each other.  Allan explained his assignment to the Segway campaign and the need to find a theme that would stimulate wealthy early adapters who might otherwise waste their money on hang gliders or jet skies (both appealing to relatively dead-end markets).  
       “AOL,” the boy said after a few minutes.  “I mean, they have more stuff now, but when it started its entire customer base was guys looking to hang out with kids.  There was nothing on it except chat rooms, and in their archives I’m sure you wouldn’t find many people who said, ‘sorry, kid, I was looking for an adult.’”
       
       “Well, what do you think?” Allan asked, prepared for both his friend’s acuteness and  perspicuity, but still impressed with his grasp of the legendary big picture. 
       “It’s a shame you can’t ride double,” the boy replied, “because then you could find out.  You could buzz over by one of the ponds and have a boy back here in fifteen minutes, guaranteed.  Ergo, the basic concept is sound as the dollar; you know, underlying value and merit, all that good traditional stuff.”
       “And…” the writer prompted.
       “Okay,” the boy mused, thinking for a moment, “you could park it in front of that tree.  We could be behind the tree, almost out of sight, but say with our left legs showing, mine in front of yours, just up to a little above my knee.  Get coy with the caption.  It could read something like: ‘don’t go carving up no tree, hear?’; in other words, as if we, an adult and child, were standing there using a knife on the bark, but everybody would know the tree was safe, and the Segway would be all glowed up with fancy lighting.
       “Isn’t that what they call high-concept?”
       “Only in the realm of outstanding IQs,” Allan observed, “but it’s perfect; totally obvious, but with what they call in politics ‘plausible deniability’ – I mean the couple could be carving their initials, romance not necessarily involved, or digging out a bullet, examining a cocoon, making a rubbing, spitting for accuracy, or even yelling, because talking to house plants is one thing, but an oak needs a sterner approach – and what it amounts to is pulling the wool over the eyes of  the standards-and-practices guys, who wouldn’t be wasted in s&p if they were very bright.” 
       “Where would you put the ads,” Pete asked.
       “’Playboy’, ‘Hustler’; underground and alternative papers…”
       “And spam,” the boy enthused, interrupting, “with a caption: ‘don’t let this picture prevent your wrong ideas.’”
       “And how about our arms?” Allan asked his instant-study protégée, “assuming you want to pose with me.”.
       “I don’t know,” Pete said after musing a moment.  “If both our left hands are visible, you know, kind of wrapped around the trunk, we probably wouldn’t be digging out a bullet or doing a rubbing, where if it was just our legs showing, we could be doing any of the above.”
       
       “Neat,” the older male responded, “we could do both, then have a which-is-less-offensive? reader contest.”
       “You’d kill,” the boy said; “look at the spam now, ninety eight percent pure garbage and rip-offs, repeated endless thousands of times.  Something like that, even just the picture with discreet product placement, and you’d, a, stimulate interest in the possibilities of the machine, and, b, soften up the attitudes towards men and boys who like to be alone with each other once in awhile.”
       “To say nothing,” Allan added, “of demonstrating that spam can be used as a general advertising tool, rather than being almost exclusively the huckster’s venue.  What if it often was a good picture, I mean not the kind of thing we want to do, but just nice pictures, with a little message instead of trash that looks like it was composed by dull chimps working to impossible deadlines.”  
       “That’s what my uncle Kerb says,” Pete noted: “that spam makes us look like an imbecile nation, ignorant and ugly to the bone.”
 	“And unless we actually did a contest, which is about half an idea at this point, we wouldn’t even need any links.  Just the picture, probably in black and white.”
	
	“It would work so well it would be just wicked,” the boy enthused, “and you could even throw in safety.  A condom packet in the foreground, the Segway at middle distance, and an out of focus, but very likely illegitimate couple in the back ground, the adult huddled over the child.”
       “The sad thing is,” Allan mused, “that they can’t make a children’s model; the wheels on mine are barely big enough for general safety; go any smaller and you’d be in trouble.”
       “But you could do it as a dreamscape,” the boy said, “you know, a ‘maybe-someday’ sort of thing, a big and small one parked outside an old barn in Vermont, or something like that.”
       “Or how ‘bout: ‘vision of a perfect world,’ with the big one parked close behind the little one?”
       “Ye-ah,” the junior partner chirped.
       “But there’s another sad thing,” the senior partner advised.  “Who do we bill?  Ten grand and we can spam the world half to death; that’s fifteen hundred for the agency; half of that for us, plus, the agency wouldn’t get involved in anything like that, in the first place.”
       “You don’t look like a money type,” Pete noted, “but if you were, you could run the slick stuff, and back it up with the super spam.”
       “Foxy,” Allan grinned, “and you’re right about the money thing; half the time it’s more of a nuisance than it’s worth, but I’m young and single and have a private kitty...”
       
       “But the overview,” the boy cut in, reminding his friend of their earlier conversation, “is to get the machine into total mass-market status, hundreds of thousands a month, as soon as possible.  You’ll just have to hope anyone who gets short-changed up front will come out okay in the end.”
       “And then there’s Kazaa,” Allan noted.
       “Oh, wow,” Pete responded, “then it wouldn’t have to be coy.  Oh, that’s so – so wickedly bad.  A total video, with the machine in the background.”
       “Yes,” the young man said, “and tease for it in the spam and even in the classified.”
       “Just type S-e-g-w-a-y,” the cutie chirped again.  And the boy was right about the overview; about the transporter exceeding the parameters conventionally ascribed to a product; it was more than just money.  Sure, there was not a boy like Pete Franklin on every knoll in any park, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody for anyone.  What the machine was was the ultimate ice breaker.  And how thin that ice often was.  The slightest tap, and presto, a budding relationship.  Take it anywhere, let a few kids ride it; most natural thing in the world, then pick the most likely.
       “I though of a couple of other things,” Pete announced after a few moments of sitting on a pair of handy boulders and staring at each other, still only half believing.
       “What?” the enthralled adult asked.
       “First,” the thirteen year old replied, “like with the safety and condom thing, sell a by-product of fitness.  You asked me if you’d come by, without the machine, if I’d have been attracted to you.  Well, it happens the answer would have been yes, even though I avoid certain areas of Central Park with all deliberation.  But what if you were fat and you’d stopped beside me?  Waste of a cool machine…”
       “What’s the second one?” Allan asked.
       “The way you trick it,” the boy replied.  “If you’re into hot, carnal blast-offs, you could go all skulls and ravens and serpents.  If you were a mincing you-know-what, pink might do, with a few flowers to reduce misunderstandings.  If you had other children you were molesting, you could mount pictures of them in bathing suits.  Girls or boys.  If you liked camping and trail riding, then pictures of that.  If you were into art, some high concept photos of you and your machine.  If you like horses, for another example, you could use them as a fender-art theme, and have a buddy standing by with a bus to carry off the girls.”
       
       It sounded funny, but it was awesomely true.  It wasn’t an ice breaker in the sense of a bartender’s little hammer, it was nuclear powered and could steam up a glacier.  For both of them, it was an object lesson in how genius needs genius.  Weird, because at its root it was no more sophisticated than a game of leapfrog.  Which brought up looking before you leap, and, mega-plot to save the world aside, looking at Pete was all the pay Allan would want for a year.  A cutie in responsiveness and demeanor, only, though he hadn’t been hit with any ugly stick.  Common schoolboy face; medium brown hair and brown eyes.  A gentle and slightly distant way that was certainly no heritage of growing up in the city; innocence, probably even to a crude word or concept, such as “package” or “man meat”, but an innocence based on higher matters and superior levels rather than ignorance or obtuseness.  He had the build beloved of chickenhawks; a three hundred ten dollar boy.  Biggish mouth, biggish hands and feet; if he had a television look-alike, it would be the youngest brother on the popular home-handyman show.  Not sweet, but comfortably close; not cute, but refreshingly removed.  But vectors related to world salvation have a way of intruding on even the most intriguing of budding relationships, and Allan pictured the park, five years hence, the San Francisco politicians getting the hell out of the way because te voters were loose, and instead of limiting displays of personal preference to glorified bumper stickers, the very park would be informally zoned into basic categories; a little signage, because orientations didn’t follow hard rules, and in the end something like traditional Mexican villages where the girls mill around the bandstand while the boys circle on display.  The variation would be for the men to let the boys ride, following wherever the child led, on foot (a little exercise is tolerable, a lot messes up your joints).  Hell, do it in January and there wouldn’t be any ice.  And were there more parks and park-like gathering areas in the world than Central Park?  Silly boy.
       
       “It was a little embarrassing when you wanted to quiz me,” Pete said after a pause in their brainstorming.
       “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” Allan responded.
       “What did you want to know,” the boy said, coloring.
       “I thought your body felt really beautiful against mine,” Allan whispered, “and I wondered if another adult male had ever touched you.”
       “Do you want me to tell you everything?” the boy asked, shy not coy.
       “More about who he was and what part he played in your life, if any,” the older male said, “but you can tell more if you want to.  If there are others, I probably wouldn’t be interested, but I get a pretty good impression you’re not the village pump.”
       “Just Uncle Kerb,” Pete said with a shy smile.
       “Did it happen once, or a lot of times?” Allan asked.
       “Half way been once and a lot,” his young friend replied.
       “And you hung out with him a lot, or just when he wanted to touch you.”
       “He spent the winter before last with us in New Hampshire,” the boy explained.  “We became like joined at the hip, mostly because he ate a liberal with every meal, first slaughtering one to serve as a centerpiece on the table.  Of course, there was never any blood or half-consumed body to dispose of, but in every other way he made burger out of them, and, since there’s not all that much else to laugh about these days, you know, with Fran Dresser back in front of her mirror where she belongs, we hit it off.  I mean, there’s nothing funny about fat people.  They vote.  Their medical agenda is going to cripple us to the point of no return before I’m your age, but nonetheless he makes them look ridiculous.”
       
       “He must be loving the California recall,” Allan said.
       “The comedians have a lot of money,” the boy responded, “and some of them have been around long enough to make things happen.”
       “Positive outlook,” Allan laughed.
       “Totally optimistic,” the boy agreed, speaking of himself and his uncle, “democracy has been funny business from day one, though it helps to be affluent and detached to see it that way.”
       “Everybody stands in its way,” the writer added, “so the carnage of the falling Liberty Tree should be spectacle writ large.”
       “And Holly-would make it happen if no one else bothered,” Pete quipped.
       “Do you communicate a lot with your uncle?” he asked.
       “Every few days by e-mail,” the boy said.  “That’s the greatest thing in the world.”
       “It must be for him, too,” the older male observed to the boy’s blush of pride.
       “Thanks,” he said, “I guess he still likes having me as a friend.”
       “He probably misses you very much,” Allan noted.
       “The physical thing, the intensity of it, died out after a few months,” Pete explained, “and two or three letters a week go a long way towards making up for the rest.”
       “He sounds like a great correspondent,” Allan said.
       “Wicked,” the boy grinned, “a leftist corpse in every letter.”
       “Anything particularly savory, recently?”
       “Canada,” the boy replied, “they went through a million-mile political thrash to legalize marijuana for medical use, put together some kind of sanctioned consortium to produce the stuff, for some reason, in an abandon mine, then turned out smoke that the trial users agreed was disgusting.  They all wanted their money back.  One person actually registered for the program.  Democracy under the socialists.”
       
       “Not up to the level of a peasant with a hoe,” Allan nodded, adding:  “If only it weren’t so all inclusive, but it is in fact the toilet of the masses; one touch of the handle, and we won’t have to listen south of the border to hear the sucking sound, we won’t be able to hear anything else.”
       “And all those fat people,” the boy sighed, “how will they ever fit?”
       “The fun has to be in the watching,” Allan concurred.  He was right, if you didn’t see the humor, you were one very lost puppy dog.  There had been ages of poets, ages of love and ages of war; ages of discover and invention along with ages of disease and decline, but had there ever been an age of the total joke?  Where ALL you could do was laugh?  Or was that just an alarmist and disgruntled interpretation of an age where everyone was chowed down to the max, exceeding the wildest dreams of a hungry child, fucking daily?
       
       
       I’ll take a little bow here, as is often my wont, mid-story.  Write my appearance off to the nature of a good feller; one who doesn’t want you sitting through the entire performance with your basked of gamy fruit in your lap.  Let the apples and kiwi fly; I deserve them.  I handle my readers with the least imaginable grace and goodwill; butter and sauce them as if they were spaghetti, then, and you’ve already figured this out for yourselves, it’s sueee! sueee! at the back door.   Amble, the farm’s eight hundred pounder, defies her name at such moments and always the first to arrive.  Again, you’ve figured the rest out all on your own.  I suppose the rest of the story is pretty predictable, too; sure; Pete is a deputized vice officer and there’s a video rig hidden in a tree that’s already been part of the story, and will continue to be.  You think I’m kidding?  Again, you’re right, because in this particular case, I actually am having you on.
       
       
       “Are you molesting other boys?” Pete asked, reengaging all our attention.
       “I’ve made an appointment to,” Allan replied, and, not wanting to tease the boy with a kooky answer, he explained.  “One of my friends at work, Heff Millard, he’s just in his thirties, he has a boy, eleven, Chuck.  Both Heff and I got molested extensively when we were preteens; it came out one night when we were working late on a project.  Neither of us are gay, have any interest of that sort in each other, but both of us realize there’s more to life than flat feet and an iron girder.  A few weeks later he told me about Chuck, that he was intelligent, mature, and curious.  Invited me over to dinner, where we seemed to get along about like you and your uncle.  Last week we had another talk and he was fairly specific about asking if I’d take Chuck camping.  This was significant because we’d both let adults pull our underpants down for the first time while we were alone in the woods.  It’s not something you rush, but next weekend we’re scheduled to spend three days together, probably up around Katahdin.  Chuck wants to carry a hydraulic jack about half way up the Abol trail, and tip over a huge rock.  For environmental reasons, we won’t actually do it, but that’s the kind of kid it’s fun to hang out with, at least in my book.”
       
       “Do you think he’s a virgin?” Pete asked.
       “Heff isn’t interested in him,” the older male replied, “but he’s been on a number of sleepovers, so it’s likely he has some experience.”
       “Does it make a difference?” the boy then asked.
       “No,” the man said.  “The physical part, itself, doesn’t make any difference, so whether it has or has not happened before, makes even less.”
       “But you’ll quiz him about it when you’re alone, right?” he asked.
       “When I said it didn’t make any difference,” Allan replied, “I meant in the morning.  Breakfast will be the same whether, or not…  so will the following day, and the one after that.  But we’re humans, not animals; there’s more to it.  Two things more.  Anticipation.  In boys a little older than you, it can reach the level of insanity, affecting their grades and every facet of their lives; and that’s just over the yin and yang of conventional dating; falling in, falling out, dumping and getting dumped.  That’s part of our makeup.  So allowing for this, in general, as normal, even if it’s a stretch to do so, we arrive at actually being alone with someone we think is way cute.  Anticipation, then the event.  Then nothing except the underlying friendship.  So, yes, if he’s responsive, we’ll talk.  If he wants to be explicit about things that have happened with him, it will increase the anticipation, and probably make the event more intense.”
       
       “Were you really nervous in the woods?” Pete whispered.
       “Just about half,” his friend replied, “Mr. Phelps, my scout leader, had a reputation for molesting boys when they got to be ten or eleven.  It was sort of an open secret; he was a great guy, the kids and scouts liked him, and he never used any kind of pressure except to invite certain boys on private trips.  In fact, they respected him so much that no boy ever told what happened, but they’d all admit, in private, that something had.  He was almost forty when he took me and he’d been doing it with three boys a year, for twenty years;  with half the fathers of the scouts in our troop, in fact.”
       “How did it happen?” Pete whispered.
       “We came to a really nice overlook on the trail after about two hours,” Allan recalled, “and he just said:
       “Allan, would you like to go into the woods or awhile?”
       “Yes, Mr. Phelps,” the eleven year old scout replied.  The clambered up a steep bank, then headed into the trees.
       “You know about never getting out of clear sight of the trail in flat country, right?” the thirty nine year old athlete asked his young trooper.  “You can get lost in half the distance you can spit on flat ground, and hiking in hilly terrain lulls you; acts as an automatic compass that’s totally missing in other locations.”
       Allan nodded.  He’d heard it before but it was good to be reminded.  Lost in the woods.  Yuk.  They found a jumble of boulders, drank from their canteens, dropped their packs, and seated themselves.
       “Do you know why I invited you?” the handsome leader asked.
       “No,” the boy said, not wanting to appear presumptuous.
       “Because of Kit Nigel and Baker Randolph,” he said.  “They both really like you and suggested I invite you.”
       “I like them, too,” Allan said.
       “And you know my reputation isn’t built on lies and falsehoods, right?”
       “I don’t know it, but I surmise it,” Allan answered, trying not to sound precocious, but respecting his scout leader’s judgment in the matter of Kit and Baker enough not to want to distort anything.
       “Well, you’re right in doing so,” Chris Phelps said, “I’m groovily married, as you know, with two boys and a girl, with whom I have conventional relationships, but I like masturbating with boys your age, as do millions and millions of other men.”
       “I’ve never done it,” Allan said.
       “That doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Chris responded, “Kit had been molested before, Baker was a virgin, and it was no more important – not as important – as the color of their socks.  That’s not important, but what is is that you have a complete experience while we’re together, a number of complete experiences both in the woods and in the tent.  What messes up kids your age is getting half fondled, a creeping hand in a theater, some really weird feelings, and then nothing, leaving confusion and frustration.  Spending a weekend together, probably being openly homosexual with each other a dozen times or so, and you’ll simply know what there is to know and, or you wouldn’t be here, file it in the proper place for future reference at the proper time, in the proper place, with the proper partner or partners.”
       
       “How about diseases?” the boy asked.
       “No greater defense than knowing what’s going on,” Chris replied, “and not falling into some toilet trap because you’re curious or unsatisfied; not dating seedy girls to get a piece, as you guys like to say.  As far as this weekend goes, and other times the two of us might be together, I only have actual sex with Jenny.  With scouts, we stick to whispering and jerking off together.  If you want, I’ll ejaculate on your body, and that’s completely safe with any partner as long as you don’t have a cut.  Kit and Baker both want to take you orally, suck you until you cum in their mouths, and, in their cases, that’s safe.  Baker had only been with one partner, and had not taken sperm in his mouth, so, with a little discipline on all your parts, you’ll be safe with each other, and you’re young enough to even experiment with mounting each other if you want.  That’s something that can be pretty painful with an adult partner.”
       
       “Are Kit and Baker gay?” Allan asked next.
       “No,” the man said, “in fact, so far, in twenty years, I’ve never been with a gay boy that I know of, at least not any that turned out gay to anyone’s knowledge.  Gay is a mind set, and, to most people, a very unattractive one.  It signifies acting out; uncomfortable issues that don’t seem to improve over time.  You will very likely grow up to be a child molester, and, if you do well in school, you may well choose career options, starting with summer camps and scouts, while you’re in school, that bring you in contact with boys between the ages of nine and fourteen.  I’m precocious at three children a year, most of my former scouts are happy with a fraction of that, so that should give you some perspective.  And, to repeat, none are gay in the sense of adult male-male relationships, though it’s possible situations arise which result in the occasional exception.
       “But,” he went on, “there is one major exception.  Adult males with a child.  In fact, that will probably happen with us tomorrow.  It did the second day with Kit and Baker.  In both cases, we met a nice looking guy on the trail; he took a subtle interest, nothing awkward or overt, and after awhile we went into the woods, the boys feeling more comfortable if I was along.”
       “Did you watch what happened,” the now panting boy asked.
       “Yes,” Chris said, “in both cases the strangers cummed off on the boys’ bare chests while I was holding them in my arms, their backs to my chest.”
       “Were you naked?” Allan asked.
       “No,” Chris replied, “there is a limited place for the hot and fast and wild, and you might as well learn about it out here.  And both boys went off by themselves with a stranger, coming back to the trail in about half an hour.  That usually happens, once and sometimes twice, especially if we’re out for a long weekend.”
       “What if one wanted me to, you know, do something with my mouth?” Pete queried.
       “Baker kissed me on the lips when he got back to the trail,” Chris answered, “and his mouth was salty and even a little slick with semen.  He was with a particularly nice eighteen year old, and I think it was a great experience for him.  But generally speaking, no one out hiking is likely to be the type to force anyone to do anything, drunk, sober, or excited.  In other venues, you obviously have to be more careful, but even then, the overwhelming majority of boylovers are careful how they swat a mosquito on a kid.”
       
       “How about girls,” was the next question from the eleven year old.
       “I’m going to rape Angela, my daughter, on her eight birthday,” Chris replied.  “That’s how Jenny learned, with her dad, and so it’s all but written on the calendar.  Kit has a seven year old sister, Mary Ellen, and she seems to be very eager.  If there aren’t any gays in the troop alumni, there are a certain number of Free Spirit households, which basically means open incest but also includes a limited number of non-related partners for the girl.”
       “Wow,” the boy said.
       “It’s like drinking,” Chris responded. “I mean, what a bummer, to become an alcoholic, and never be able to drink comfortably, again.  Same exact thing; with sensitivity and discretion, a lot of exceedingly exciting and very sensual things can occur, as long as they never come close to dominating.  Yes, there is occasional partying, and group encounters, but by and large it’s private and insular and no one cares because no one can see how the victims are different from any other kids, except to note that they tend to be more stable and happier.”
       “How can you become adjusted if you don’t know what to adjust,” the boy murmured to himself, to his friend’s laugh.
       “Perfect,” Chris said, “if I didn’t know I’d remember it forever, I’d have it tattooed on me.”
       That made Allan laugh.
       “But, on a serious note,” the quasi-sermon went on, “don’t ever become precocious and be careful about assuming things.  Lots of very decent, contributing people detest even the thought of an adult touching a child.  Lots of boys your age would freak out at the thought of a man touching them.  They may know, tacitly, of a situation, so keep it that way.  That’s why we’re anti gay.  It does belong exactly in the closet, metaphorically, and nowhere else, out of respect for the preferences of people at large.”
       
       “But you should try to teach some, shouldn’t you?” the boy asked, “I mean even sitting here just talking about it is like three times the most exciting thing in my life.”
       “Kit and Baker are going to eat you absolutely alive, hold the pickles, hold the lettuce,” Chris laughed, “and I’ll come right out and say you are the three best boys I’ve been with in the last twelve years, and then it was only one very witty and genius level kid named Sandy Waters, still a close friend.”
       “So how do we do it?” Allan said, trying to blush only modestly at the compliment.
       “Kit has a deck of cards showing a cute nineteen year old molesting a boy your age,” Chris said, “and if you know a boy who’d likely be willing, and kids are surprisingly good at communicating that kind of thing, for real, as young as about five, you can show him a few of the cards.  Plus, there’s the personal computer, which is great because it gives boys of different ages a legitimate common interest, plus serving as a focal point for whispering about stuff.”
       
       “There’s a really big middle ground, isn’t there,” Pete said, “I mean, between being all Victorian and missing out on everything but one person, if you’re lucky, and being some kind of hustler who does things several times a day.”
       “Well,” Chris said, “there were lots of unhappy Victorians, abuse of legal drugs and the like, but there are virtually all unhappy hustlers, with addictions to all drugs, so you can use both as way markers, and it should be obvious which is the brighter beacon.”
       “A lot of people in town say they can tell your former troopers from the back,” Pete remarked, “because they’re slim.”
       “Protecting you from disease and getting the wrong girl pregnant is important,” Chris explained in answer, “but getting you guys to stay fit is the biggest accomplishment of all; the thing I’m most proud of.  Over ninety percent of the boys I’ve kept in touch with, and that’s well over half of former scouts, are spot on weight-wise.  But it’s not me; I’m not exactly calling people up or subpoenaing them for weigh-ins; it’s the lifestyle.  Knowing from time to time an attractive child is going to come along, going to be willing if not actually eager, and if that isn’t a reward for dietary discretion, then there is no such thing.”
       “How about exercise?” the boy asked.
       “I’m agin it,” Chris replied.  “They say the younger kids of your generation carry backpacks that weigh half as much as they do, for hours every day; bombs in lockers or some crazy leftist applesauce like that; so straining already damaged joints is my idea of a bad idea.  Stay lively, stay active, watch your weight like a hawk, and live half-way forever, without the intervention of a team of sports medicine specialists starting at your ankles and ending at your neck, with a long stop at your wallet.”
       
       “Cool,” the boy said with some relief evident in his voice.
       “Our common denominator,” Chris elaborated, “is reading.  History.  Our hobby is mocking liberals; kind of a cop-out, because they are so relentless in their glib but mindless shenanigans, but it beats talking about the wonders of man going to the moon.”
       “So if Kit and Baker come over, and my dad wants to read to us, they won’t freak out?” the boy asked, unable to keep a trace of skepticism from his voice.
       “Kit’s grinding his way through vastly more than he ever wanted to know about searching for a Northwest Passage,” Chris replied, “and your other friend is on a John Irving jag that will probably last ‘till September, so I wouldn’t worry about your dad appearing like a nerd.”
       “How come you haven’t said too much about this at regular meetings,” the boy wanted to know.
       “Not my place,” said the scout master, “we stick to a pretty limited agenda because otherwise things get wandering and drifty.  I can only extend myself about four days a month beyond my routine, and that’s not enough to encourage kids one-on-one.  The result is, I choose to pick three a year, and try to get more fully involved, leaving the rest more or less on their own.”
       
       “I’m glad I was one,” the boy said with a blush.
       “In an era when kids are turning into refrigerators with toes,” Chris responded, “a boy like you becomes impossible, because you’d hardly be possible in a troop of svelte, fit kids.  You are, not bones about it, a totally outstanding you male.  Dazzling.  The best I’ve ever know.  And I know you’re too modest to go around pumping your friends to see if I said the same thing to them, or any other scouts, so I’ll have to volunteer for a polygraph to assure you I’m not kidding, not in the least.  You will make an outstanding mark on the world, probably before you’re thirty, and I don’t mean some stunt that gets in the papers, I mean a primal involvement that will make a real difference, though not one person in a million knows you had anything to do with it.”
       “Sure,” the boy said a little skeptically, abashed at the waves of pleasure crashing around his ears like Niagara, “maybe someone will invent a magic machine to give me inspiration.”
       “Heavens,” Chris laughed, “don’t expect it now.  Now’s the time to miniaturize a major aspect of most boys’ lives and store it away so you can maul the grades you’ll need when the right project does come along.  That and the reading.  Sports, scouts, girls, clubs, excessive friends,  vacations, none of that matters at your age, and, if it does, you’re having more experiences than most kids your age, so chill out.”
       
       “I feel about as chilled as yellow lava at this point,” the child murmured.
       “I’m not temporizing to tease you,” Chris assured his friend, “but because it does make what happen more intense.  You’ll do the same with your young friends.  I mean, sometimes you may zip them in the shower and let it happen fast, but in general, especially if it’s their first time, you’ll try to make it last half an hour or so, and that’s pretty hard to do with a boy once he’s asked you to remove his underpants.”
       Pete nodded, then stood and moved between Chris’s long, athletic legs.  The man unbuttoned his uniform jersey, tracing his fingers from the boy’s neck and down over his baring chest as he unfastened the garment, folding it neatly after Allan had shrugged it off.  The boy did the same, and soon the males were experimenting with touching each other from the waist up.
       “It usually starts this way,” Chris whispered, standing and moving behind the eleven year old.  “The man will touch you a little playfully first, ruffle your hair, tug your ears, that kind of thing.  If anything is wrong with the situation, just say sorry, or indicate it would be okay at another time, and move away.  If you like what’s happening, and feel comfortable with the practical side, time, place, and privacy, you just stand still.  After a couple of minutes, the older boy or man will ask if he can move against you.  If you nod, he’ll get close enough for you to feel his penis and ask you if it’s okay.  Usually, that will be all he asks before he puts his hands down low on your waist, like this.  If you stay still, and if you’ve let him go this far, you should, though you can still change your mind, he’ll pull your shirt up so he can touch you underneath.  When he begins really molesting you, using both hands over your chest and belly, he’ll ask you if another man’s ever done this with you.  Tell the truth in as much or little detail as you’re comfortable with, but don’t ever make anything up.  That’s for the hustlers.  While you’re whispering, you can welcome your partner by standing on your toes and reaching your arms back so you can link your fingers behind his neck.  After he’s taken you that way for a few minutes, you can ask him, whether you’re whispering about things, or not, to take his shirt off.  That’s the standard beginning for a man and boy, and also for a man taking a young girl, though he’s likely to be more interested in a female’s chest than a male’s.”
       
       “What happens next?” the panting boy asked.
       “If it’s possible, you get completely naked,” Chris replied, “and then make love any way you want.  But keep in mind that by far the favorite position, if you want to call it that, is for the man to take the boy from behind for awhile, then the boy, if he’s right handed, to stand at the adult’s right hip and put his left arm around his waist while he masturbates him with his right hand.  The boy usually takes the man all the way in that stance, then moves back in front of the taller male, and lets himself be jerked off until he looses control and cums off while the man looks down over his shoulder.”
       “So if I was with a little boy, he’d stand on my right?” Allan whispered over his shoulder.
       “Yes,” his leader said, “and his little right  hand on you.  I don’t like thinking in terms of turns, but when his time comes, you stand  behind him, and, if you use your fingers carefully, maybe with a little baby oil, you can masturbate him the way I’m going to do it with you”
       “How long?” the curious younger wanted to know.
       “Five to ten minutes,” Chris replied.  “Same as here; do your best to have an extended time together; not half-truths or incomplete sentences.  And another very important thing with a virgin that age, tell him what’s going to happen at the end.  Be sure he or she understands.  Lots of kids love the touching,  fondling, and masturbating,  but they’re not ready for the sudden hot spurting of a mature male..”
       “Maybe it could be part of what happens,” Allan suggested, “first time on their feet, second, on their knees…”
       “If Kit and Baker don’t save a bone for me,” Chris laughed, “I’m gonna be one sore scout leader.”
       “I just think I want you up inside me,” the boy whispered, turning to face the adult.
       “I can’t,” Chris said, flushing passionately, “Jenny’s that kind of wife.  But what I will do, if we meet the right guy while we’re hiking, is hold you while it happens with him.”
       “That’s what I meant,” the imp said with a shy grin.  Then his face grew more serious.  “Can I ask you a question that’s sort of off the subject?” he said.
       “Sure,” Chris enthused.  Vamping, under the best of circumstances was tough sledding, and with Allan a little help would be doubly welcome.
       “Well,” the boy said, “it’s more of a theory than a question, and I thought of it because out here we’re involved in what you might call alternative behavior, which brings up alternative peoples, which brings up alternative life-styles.  
       “So then there’s the famous guy who sailed around the world, Mr. Slocum, about a hundred years ago, right?”
       “Joshua Slocum in the ‘Gypsy Moth’,” the intrigued leader nodded.
       
       “Okay,” the boy continued, “so he’s sailing through the Straits of Magellan, almost at the tip of South America, and he sees the most uncivilized people in the world.  They go completely naked even though it sometimes snows, and neglect their kids; eat raw food, pretty much the pits.”
       “He was pretty stunned by it,” Chris said.
       “Okay,” the boy responded, “here are my questions.  First, were these the worst people?  In other words, as the tribes came down from the north over the last ten thousand years, did they constantly push the worst of their members ahead of them, so, in the end, they ended up in Terra del Fuego, still too lazy even to wear thongs?”
       “I wouldn’t bet a nickel against it,” Chris said, adding: “on the other hand, it could even be the opposite, though I’d bet on your theory if I had to bet.  Maybe the only aboriginals who were rugged enough to cross Patagonia made it that far south, and they were so rugged, they didn’t need clothes.”.
       “Cool,” the boy smiled happily, “then, if my theory’s right, was it the cold that kept them alive, at all?  In other words, did they sleep together so the women had kids, and did the women keep the otherwise ignored babies with them , for warmth?”
       “You’ll have me awake all night if there’s any more to this,” the scout leader frowned down at the hundred pounder.
       “Just one more part,” the boy promised.  “Say you took a boatload of them and dropped them off near the equator.  No longer having to huddle for warmth, would they all head away from each other and die out?”
       “There’s only one answer I can think of,” Chris said.
       “What?” the child asked.
       “Inviting you to Angela’s birthday party.”
       “That’s what I meant,” the wise guy grinned.
       “Cool,” the man said, easing the boy back against the a boulder and rummaging in his backpack for his phone.  As he dialed, he carried it off out of earshot, and was gone for several minutes.  When he returned he was naked, carrying his shorts and boots, and hugely erect, seven and a half inches, thick, circumcised, with his jutting penis bent slightly to his left.  He lay his cargo on top of his pack and displayed for Allan, who stripped down to his underpants, then moved in front of him.  Chris huddled over the boy, again molesting him.  “Jenny said I could mount you,” he whispered.
       
       “May I have Angela’s hand in marriage?” the eleven year old asked of the eight year old.
       “Done deal,” Chris whispered, his hands now very low on the slim boy.  Reflexively, Allan threw his arms back around the adult’s neck and spread his legs, thrusting his hips to the gentle touch of the man.  Chris let both hands wander down over the child’s briefs, then skinned them down over his hips and his young friend brought his legs together so the underpants could fall to the moss.  His feet clear, Chris guided him against a nearby tree so the youngster could spread his legs the more widely.  He openly fondled Allan’s big, five inch boy’s boner, repeatedly pulling his foreskin back to expose his dark pink glans as his student huffed and panted in his arms.
       “I’ll have to rape you in the tent tonight,” he whispered, “because it will probably take at least an hour to fully mount you, okay?”
       “Yes,” Allan panted.
       “And you’ll have to ask me repeatedly, after you’ve ejaculated,” he said.
       “I will,” Allan replied, nodding.
       “I won’t hold you to it,” his mentor said, “but I would love it, and not just because it would be my first time.”
       “I would too,” the boy panted.
       “And you will be sore the next day, even though I have the lotion I use when we masturbate, okay?”
       “Yes,” the eleven year old stated simply, his locker of bright responses closed do to the incapacitation of the owner when it came to thinking of anything but having his leader’s beautiful penis deep inside him and waking up in the morning full of sperm.
       “Are you ready to have some lubricating gel on your penis?” the older male asked as he continued fondling the preteen’s hugely swollen erection.
       “Yes,” Allan hissed.  “Can I put some on you?”
       
       “That’s what I meant,” Chris said with a squeeze, gently releasing the boy to retrieve the KY from his pack.  He handed it to his friend and steadies himself against the tree as he spread his long, muscular legs widely as the child had done in welcoming his touch.  The spent several minutes huddled together, hands experimenting with each other as they spread the slick fluid over each other.  When he was fully wet, Allan moved back in front of his tall partner, and the man wrapped his left arm around the slim, heaving chest as he now openly masturbated the eleven year old.  His stroking was slow and easy, tender and gentle; the boy hissed and moaned softly in response, thrusting his hips deliberately in time to the adult’s touch.  “Usually,” Chris suggested, “the boy tells the older male to stop after a few minutes, then moves to his right hip, okay?”
       “Okay,” Allan said as his partner slowed his stroking and finally released his hardest-ever boner.  
       “The reason is,” Chris explained as the child’s left arm went around his waist, “that the senior male always ejaculates first the first few times he’s with a younger boy.  It’s like I said about warning a young, inexperienced partner, not shocking them.  A boy may like being molested while he’s excited, but if he ejaculates first, there’s always the possibility of a dramatic letdown, going from hot to cold, so to speak, and if he suddenly starts getting an adults cum all over him while he’s cold, it can be a freak-out.”
       “Okay,” the boy nodded, stroking the adult’s huge erection in such a way he mixed the freely flowing seminal fluid with the slippery gel.  Chris braced himself against a strategic branch, spreading his legs wider for the boy at his right hip.
       “I’d like you to do this with me on Angela’s bed,” he rasped to his immature friend, “while she’s lying back looking up at us.  Would you want to experiment that way?”
       “Yes,” Allan panted.
       “And I have two more things,” Chris managed to whisper.  “First, Jenny has very high, pretty breasts, would you like her to kneel beside you on the bed and jerk you off while you’re masturbating me?”
       “Yes,” Allan said.
       “Okay,” Chris, obviously reaching the edge said.  “One more thing.  Jenny’s my daughter, Angela my daughter and granddaughter.  Jenny had her when she was eleven, so she’s still a teenager.”
       The news focused Allan and his hand began beating hard and fast.
       “Kit and Baker both held me against them when it happened,” were the last words of the now dramatically tensing athlete.  Except, as the naked eleven year old complied: “I’m cumming.”
       “Pretend I’m Angela,” Allan whispered as jet after hot jet of semen showered his belly and chest.  “I’m cumming,” the adult repeated, and indeed his spray seemed to redouble as he shuddered and quaked to the youngster’s hand, now fisted hard and fast at the very base of his huge penis.  As his climax began to subside Chris slicked his right hand on the child’s streaming belly and gently manhandled the boy in front of him, again holding his now eel-slipper torso in his left arm and jerking him off with his right hand.
       “Pretend,” he whispered after about four minutes of gentle stroking, “you’re wetting Angela inside so she’ll be ready when I rape her.”  The boy tensed like a cartoon figure and panted his warning. then began spraying as they both looked down at his first cum.
       
       “I have to think of it to think of it,” the boy scout said half an hour later, as they neared their campsite.
       “It is amazing that way,” Chris agreed.  “The anticipation and the event seem like half the world for awhile, and afterwards, sure, it was great, but we could just as well have had a drink, talked, rested, and continued on.”
       Both nodded, and Allan concluded the story he was telling the thirteen year old boy now seated on a fallen tree in Central Park and nodding for Pete to tell what had happened with his uncle, Kerb, also at the age of eleven.
       “Will you tell me what happened with Angela?” Pete wanted to know, first.
       “How about this,” the writer replied, “how about if you come camping with Chuck and me and we save it for our first campfire?”
       “That’s what I meant,” the younger male teased, then began telling about a private resort called “Fish and Fry.”
       
       “Uncle Kerb,” the eleven year old asked, “are you going to sleep right away?”
       “No,” the twenty three year old said to his eleven year old nephew, “I’m not very sleepy.  Why, did you want to talk?”
       “Kinda,” the boy said.
       “Did you want to ask some questions, you know, about the water park?”
       “Yes,” the boy said.
       “Okay,” the older male agreed, “let me start by saying that “Fish and Fry” is not a public facility, it’s private, and not only private, but with a theme that’s, well, not exactly universal, okay?”
       “Yeah,” Pete murmured.
       “So,” the man continued after a pause, “it’s something you might want not to talk about.  The real theme of the park, that is.  Some boys love it and some boys hate it, okay?”
       “Everyone looked pretty happy,” the boy replied.
       “Members are selected with great care,” Kerb said, “and so it’s rare any mistakes are made, but just to be sure, the children, mostly boys but some girls, are eased into it.  That’s why we didn’t arrive until eight, and had to leave the pool area by nine.  To give you a preview, so if anything looked weird or kooky from your point of view, we could motor off to some other place before anything embarrassing happened.”
       
       “No,” the boy in the other bed said alertly, “I think it’s great, but I just noticed it was different.”
       “It is,” the young uncle concurred.  “Tell me some of the things you noticed, because that might be an easy way for us to talk about things.”
       “Well,” Pete said, “after a few minutes it hit me, no fat people, no beards or trendy looking, guys; everybody looked just kind of low-key and nice.”
       “Good,” Kerb said, “bull’s-eye.  What else.”
       “No women,” the boy said, “some girls, like maybe my age and younger, but no women.”
       “Second accurate take,” the man said.
       “Then,” the eleven year old went on, “I noticed that, you know, there was kind of more touching and wrestling and especially piggy-backing than there would be at a motel pool or something.”
       “There would have been a little more if we hadn’t been wearing red trunks,” Kerb noted.
       “Yeah,” the boy said, “red, yellow and green; we had red.  And trunks, not the tight kind.”
       “Okay,” the older male said, “those are the principal pieces to the puzzle.  Any boy who was allergic to what happens here, what the agenda of “Fish and Fry” is, would have a taste from observing those things, I mean that’s an awkward way of saying it, and could tell his uncle or older friend that he wanted to leave.”
       “So there aren’t any father’s here with their sons?” was Pete’s next question.
       
       “Maybe one couple in fifty,” Kerb said.  “It’s just not something that most men want with boys they live with, but it does happen.”
       “So who are the older guys if they’re not uncles?”
       “About half are uncles,” the man said, quoting from the orientation literature, “the other half are teachers, clergymen, coaches, neighbors, and sometimes even a man and boy who met by hitch-hiking or something like that.  The essential thing is that there be an established and continuing relationship.  No quickie’s with hustlers, that kind of thing.”
       
       “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up,” the boy whispered from his bed.
       “I wouldn’t have brought you here,” Kerb said, “if every instinct didn’t tell me you were the kind of curious, intelligent boy who’d at least give it a chance.”
       “It’s just too exciting to be real,” the younger male said.  “I have to be dreaming.”
       “What it actually isn’t,” Kerb explained, “is all that unusual.  It is extremely common for men to like young boys and want to touch them.  This park is a facility that acknowledges not only that, but that it’s by and large decent, ordinary men who like children, and alert and engaged children who like being with young adults.  This is a safe haven for such people.  Every adult here has taken medical tests and been subjected to a telephone interview with the phone hooked to a new-generation polygraph.  That beauty can characterize with one hundred percent accuracy in ten seconds of vocal input answering a few simple questions.  The whole process takes about two minutes, and it keeps anyone who might even think in terms of causing trouble, out.”
       
       “That’s different than the average theme park,” Pete said.
       “Most do a good job with a savvy security force,” his uncle responded, “but the electronic system is bulletproof and infallible.  It should be used extensively in a number of fields, but, lucky for us, it is used extensively here, and the result is you can go off with anyone you want in total safety, to cut to the chase.”
       “I never thought of that,” Pete whispered, “the dream thing was all about you.”
       “We’re on the same page there,” Kerb whispered in response.
       “Can I come over in your bed?” the eleven year old asked.
       “Yes,” the man said, and both whispered Hi as the boy slid in with his handsome, athletic uncle, settling a foot away from him.
       “Can I stay all night?” the child whispered.
       “As long as you want,” his uncle replied.
       “Mm,” the boy hummed, “good, because I wanted to ask you about the bathing trunks and other stuff.”
       “Okay,” Kerb whispered, “but it means whispering together about mature things that happen, so if anything makes you feel uncomfortable, just tell me and tune out.”
       
       “I really like the way your voice sounds,” the preteen rasped, “you could read from the phone book, and I’d love it.”
       “That’s because I want to sexually molest you,” Kerb husked, “and I mean fully, with some candles I brought, starting in the shower, after we talk, and then, naked, here on the bed, probably until midnight.  You’ll hear it in other males’ voices, which can be either cool or gross, depending on the circumstances.”
       “I want it to happen,:” Pete said simply.
       “It will,” the older male assured him, “but it’s better if we talk for awhile, first, unless you don’t like it.”
       “I do,” the boy responded quickly, “and it will easier waiting if I know we both want the same thing.”
       “Well, it’s not to tease or anything,” his uncle noted, “but just that the physical part only lasts a few minutes, sometimes not even that long, so I’d like to quiz you and tell you about the bathing suits, you know, their colors.  Nothing that will last for hours.”
       “Can I take my pajama top off?” the boy asked.
       “Yes,” the young man said, “but I want to get out the candles, first.  In the meantime, I’ll tell you about the suits.”
       “Cool,” the boy whispered.
       
       “We had red,” the twenty three year old explained, “and we got here at eight.  That means, as far as “Fish and Fry” goes, we’re virgins.  We’re sort of left alone for the first evening, so you can adjust without being hit on.  If we’re sexually active tonight, tomorrow we’ll wear yellow suits.  That means you’ve had a complete experience with and adult, and you wear yellow until you’ve had complete experiences with at least three mature partners, in other words, you know what to expect.  Once that’s happened, you get to wear a green suit.  
       “Did you notice anything about the green ones?”
       
       “They had badges on them,” the bright child responded.
       “From zero to four,” his teacher explained.  “A green suit means that you’ve engaged in complete masturbation with, as I said, at least three different mature partners, and it’s assumed you let them cum-off on your body and possibly on your face.  That’s a green suit with no patches.  Actually, they call them flags.”
       “Flags,” the boy noted.
       “One flag,” Kerb continued, “means you’re a little more experienced.  It means when you’ve been with an adult you’ve used your mouth while you were masturbating him.  Two flags means you’ve let him cum in your mouth, either swallowing or drooling out the semen, and you liked it.  Three means you’ve been alone with a younger male, a boy, normally, under fourteen, and had his penis up inside you and let him ejaculate in you.  Four means you’ve been mounted by an adult, and you might want it to happen again.”
       
       “And you keep telling me I’m not dreaming,” the boy said with a soft laugh.
       “There’s a fifth patch,” Kerb said, giving his schoolboy nephew a squeeze on the shoulder, “and you wear it on your right leg, not your left.  If you have a flag there, it means you want your alpha partner to be with your while you get molested, okay?”
       “That’s way smart,” the boy said, cuddling closer to his tall, athletic uncle.
       “Okay,” the man laughed, “and this part’s pretty smart too.  You can cover up any patches you want, using your fingers.  That will tell the stalker what you’ll let him do with you when he has you alone.  If you cover up all the flags on the left leg, it means you just want to jerk off with him, and you’ll let him cum on you unless you say otherwise.  Anything you don’t want to do, cover up the right flag or flags.  If you want to be alone with him, use the fingers of your right hand to cover up that flag.”
       “I get it,” the dreamy voice said, “but when do I do it?”.
       
       “The code phrase is ‘dry shower,’” Kerb said.  “You’ll be able to tell after awhile what someone near you has in mind, and lots of times it’s just to talk or hang out.  It’s a sex place but far from being a sex-crazed place.  Anyway, if you’re talking with someone and he mentions a dry shower, that’s the invitation.  If you don’t want to, for any reason, just shake your head, if you like him, you nod and then use your fingers on the appropriate flags.  It just takes a few seconds and once in awhile you’ll see other boys doing it.”
       “Is there more about the suits?” the child asked.
       “Maybe,” his uncle said, “but if there is, I’ll try to remember to tell you later.  Right now I’d like to light the candles and watch you take your pajama top off, okay?”
       “Yes,” the boy managed to croak.
       “I want to quiz you a little more while I’m unbuttoning you,” Kerb said a couple of minutes later.  Pete nodded his head.  “Most men,” the young uncle said, “ask a boy about things that have happened to him before, and the same rule applies.  You don’t have t say anything, but if you do, it should be only the truth.”
       “I’ve just heard a little locker room stuff,” the younger male responded
       
       “How about in the abstract,” Kerb coaxed, “males your own age, younger, or older, that you like?.  Have you ever had, you know, any strong feelings like that?”
       “A boy down the street,” Pete said as his handsome uncle knelt over his waist and let his fingers trail up to his nephew’s brow and cheeks.  “His name is Richard, but everyone calls him Kevin because he looks like the boy in the Home Alone movies, only he’s shy and quiet instead of being a big pain.”
       “And would you like to be kneeling over him and touching him like this?” Kerb whispered hoarsely.
       “Yes,” the boy said, “especially if you were kneeling behind me and looking over my shoulder and helping me.”
       “You haven’t touched him yet?” the man asked.
       
       “No, I haven’t even seen him with his shirt off,” Pete noted.  “He just moved in a month ago.  But he’s asked me to tell him if I ever find out anything extra interesting.”
       “That probably means he hasn’t been molested either,” Kerb observed.
       “Is there any way to tell?” the boy wanted to know.
       “None,” his friend replied; “the most sour, uptight kid can be a total virgin, and some boy that’s taking a man up inside him every night, can be the nicest kid in school.  Some kids get punked, raped, and sometimes you sort of get an idea that it might have happened, but, again, a lot of virgins drop out, too.  As far as I know, there’s no x-ray vision, but you can ask others while we’re here.  This is my first time here, myself, and I haven’t molested a child since I was sixteen and baby-sat for a boy like your friend Kevin, only he had black hair and blue eyes, but the same size and build.”
       “Did that happen a lot?” Pete whispered.
       
       “Once or twice a week for a year or so,” the man elaborated, “we got so we’d rather read; that’s how it is in healthy man/boy relationships; very exciting for awhile, very nice for awhile, nice, for awhile, then it’s nicer, most of the time, to go on to other interests.  Except, after we’d stopped touching each other for a month, it happened again when one of his friends came to spend the weekend while his parents were away.  That completely cleared the slate, you could say, which, again, is what usually happens.  One last, special time with a third person present, and that’s enough of that.”
       “So I won’t end up gay when we get up tomorrow?” the boy asked.
       “Any hint of that,” Kerb explained, “and we wouldn’t be here.  They don’t like being prejudiced, as you can tell from the mix of people in the pool, but they think the gay ‘thing’ with the mannerisms and affectations is best executed in other venues.”
       “Yeah,” the boy said, “and they keep the South Beach hard bodies out, too, I noticed.”
       
       “The actor, Rick Schroeder’s body type is the ideal,” Kerb said, “or even Tim McVeigh. The management thinks there is great aesthetic potential in young males being together, especially if you leave our the narcissistic and heavy, the latter of whom actually have an associated park of their own.”
       “Fish and Thigh?” the boy quipped, and his uncle tickled him like he was a little kid.  That brought them to a halt.  Their breathing became deep.  Kerb eased his nephew’s arms up over his head, placing his small hands behind his head.  Pete arched in response, and the young adult unbuttoned his top down to his belly, leaning forward to run his hands gently over the slim child’s smooth, bare chest.
       “I’ll never cover up the patch on my right leg,” he whispered.
       “You may be surprised about how little extra stuff actually happens,” the man said.  “It finds its own level through some kind of ephemeral formulae.  After the first few days, it’s just from time to time you’ll want to be with someone else for a little while, and it’s as if you give off not only a secret signal you’re not even aware of, but that the signal goes only to the right person.  I suppose it’s a glance or body English, but my friend that told me about “Fish and Fry” emphasized it.  It’s exciting for the first two days, then neat, and after that, comfortable.  By the end of two weeks, we’ll be like an old married couple, except with new red and yellow suits coming in every five days to keep things from turning into a snoring contest.”
       
       “And still he says I’m not dreaming,” the child said to the ceiling of their pleasant room, shrugging his top off and removing it from behind him, then reaching up to unbutton his athletic young uncle’s pajama top.
       “If you follow common sense far enough,” the man responded, “who knows where you may end up.”
       “But I guess some guys would get really uptight about it,” the boy remarked.
       “It’s almost the same as who attracts who, and when, after the third day,” Kerb mused, “there are a lot of self-assured, high self-esteem boys out there, some of them probably okay, most ignorant, narrow-minded, and, more than anything, dull.  If you think I’ve nice kids you know, you can probably picture most of them responding to being touched and letting it happen.”
       “That’s right,” the boy responded after a minute’s thought.  “I wouldn’t even limit it to most-of, I can think of the ten nicest kids I know, and I know, like you were talking about before, all of them would let you look at them and touch them.”
       “Well,” Kerb said, “be careful.  The Southern fundamentalists stake out the moral high ground, and they’re so ignorant and generally repulsive, no one has the heart to fight them for it.  They, especially the females, and very especially the fat females, can cause lots of trouble if you get careless.  And that’s as it should be.  Like religion, freedom FROM is the most important freedom of all, and the public’s freedom from exposure to what in their opinion is unseemly is to be taken very seriously.”
       “I have a teacher who embraces, at least a little, the philosophy of Extensionism,” the boy noted as his uncle slipped out of his top  “That values can be determined by extending, positively or negatively,  the various factors and principles involved in an issue.  He’d point out, in this situation, that young people wouldn’t be real thrilled if they stumbled across old people doing things, so I know what you mean.”
       
       “It’s also called perspective,” Kerb noted, now sliding down the boys legs until he was kneeling at the eleven year old’s feet.  “Are you wearing underpants?” he whispered.  Pete nodded.  He pulled down the pajamas and put them aside, running his fingers slowly up the boy’s soft inner thighs.  Pete spread his legs wide in welcome and began panting openly as he stretched his arms back grabbing the base of the headboard, and arched his slim chest.  The beautiful tableau on the bed remained almost unchanged for five minutes, only the man fondling the boy and the child’s heaving chest influencing the still-life.  Then Kerb rose to his knees and slipped out of his pajama bottoms and briefs as his nephew gazed hotly on.  Grabbing a pillow, the man placed it beside the bed as he dropped to his knees.  He took the eleven year old by his long, slim legs and maneuvered the boy to him, his legs still widely spread.  He moved over the child and huddled close, using his right hand to guide the tip of his seven inch circumcised erection up into the left leg of Pete’s underpants.  The boy gasped at the shock of a hard adult against where he’d never been touché before.  “If Kevin were with us,” Kerb rasped, “he could kneel at my right up and jerk me off so I’d cum inside your briefs”
       
       “And I could help you go up inside his underpants, too,” the panting child observed.
       Even without a third party, it was sensual and for ten more minutes the man and boy experimented with moving together, the child’s hands still linked behind his slim neck as he panted and stared hotly into his young uncle’s eyes, then down between their sweating bodies.  
       
       “Why is the code word ‘dry showers’?” Pete asked.
       “Most boys get molested for the first time in a shower,” Kerb again quoted from Fish and Fry’s website.  “And, since most boys like to watch a mature male ejaculate, and all mature males like watching a boy cum, they turn the water off so it won’t wash away the sperm, plus, it saves hot water and unnecessary wet towels.” 
       “Cool,” the sweating eleven year old said as his uncle stripped off his white briefs.
       “Also,” the man added, “you can play games in the shower.  You can pretend – just don’t overact the part – that you’re a nervous boy after his first gym class, and the coach takes you into his private bathroom so you won’t be embarrassed in front of the other boys, or pretend you’re a little girl and your handsome big brother clicks the door behind you, and, as a final note, the acoustics are very lively and that makes it more exciting especially when you start feeling that you’re going to cum pretty soon.”
       
       “You talked me into it,” the now naked boy said, and his uncle played along by boosting him to his feet.  “Give me a minute to think of something,” the cute tyke said as he disappeared behind the frosted glass, only the lithe beauty of his willowy back and long legs discernable.  It took the youngblood barely a minute to compose his scenario and he whispered he was ready.  The door clicked and Pete whispered:  “Uncle Kerb,” he said, “can we turn the engine off for awhile?”
       “Sure,” the older actor responded.
       “I just love the shock of the silence, especially since no one else is out on a weekday afternoon.”  
       “There,” the man said, providing a cue of his own.
       “Just nothing,” the boy said.  “If anything did make a sound, the snow would muffle it.”
       “I think it’s as quiet as the planet gets,” the twenty three year old agreed, “especially with this calm.”
       “Yeah,” the boy said.  “It’s even pretty warm with the sun shining down through the trees”
       “This is a good place to park,” the man ad-libbed.
       “I like the silence, I wasn’t kidding,” the boy said, “but there’s another reason I wanted to stop.”
       
       They both waited, pretending they heard nothing, while the pounding of their hearts and gentle panting echoed softly in the tile enclosure.  Pete picked up the thread of his fantasy.  “They keep warning us about stuff in school,” he said, “like they were paid by the word, but since they’re the second generation of post-Vietnam teachers, with no standards but mumbo-jumbo, I don’t trust their intelligence, even if the mean well.”
       “As long as you see it and can read your way around it,” the man said, “you’ll make out fine.”
       “But meantime,” the boy continued, “they keep painting stuff that happens if a man gets a kid alone as all black for everybody, like a million boys out of a million boys would want to commit suicide if they got molested.”
       “Better do a lot of reading,” his uncle advised.
       “So they could be wrong?”
       “It’s more complicated than that,” the older male replied.  “They have to protect the boys who wouldn’t like this.  Same principle as traffic signs, especially speed limits.  They apply to the professionally trained driver in a late-model Porsche the same way they do to the farmer in his market truck or the eighty year old who can’t see a hundred feet.  Speed kills, for everybody.  Yes, it doesn’t make sense, but no, no one’s come up with a flexilaw system based on common sense.  Only a king could do that, imposing from on-high, and allowing interpretation to be left up to the individuals involved in the situation at the time.”
       
       “I think we love dumb politicians too much,” the boy sighed.
       “So our media tells us,” his uncle agreed.
       “But how do you feel?” the boy went on.  “Does every boy that gets touched end up a weirdo?”
       “Let me put it this way,” Kerb said, “statistically, about one boy in six gets molested to the point of cumming off.  Can you tell which ones they are in your school?”
       “Just like we were talking about before,” the boy observed, “it’s probably the nice ones, because I can’t really seeing anyone but a cheerleader wanting to touch or be touched by the ego-trippers.”
       “So,” the man said, “that probably the answer.  You can’t tell, and couldn’t if you spent a week on a deserted island with a bunch of boys.  If you became special friends with one, he might tell you; might even bring it up himself, but otherwise, you’d never know.  Couldn’t even hazard an accurate guess.”
       “So at least some boys don’t mind.”
       “I’ve read that about two thirds of boys don’t care much one way or the other, and the other third is split between boys who hate it and boys who like it.”
       “One thing I can’t figure out,” the eleven year old mused, “is how anyone could know they didn’t like it at least until they’d let it happen.”
       
       “Stringent family attitudes,” Kerb said, “homophobic prejudice is bred, not inherent.  A lot of pedophiles work as lifeguards at community pools.  It’s not uncommon for them to molest twenty or thirty willing boys in a row, assuming they are nice and reasonably attractive, in the first place.  Get a hundred or even two hundred boys with a nineteen year old Rick Schroeder, and every single one of them would want to stay after, individually, or in groups.”
       “And they’d all let the lifeguard touch them?”
       “All of them,” Kerb nodded.  “alone or with other boys watching.  Their fat grandmothers would have to show up before they’d have second thoughts.”
       “So it’s as totally messed up as it can possibly be,” Pete mused.
       “Not exactly,” his uncle said, “because without a lid, the pot would boil out.  The restrictions are dangerous, because chance or fate can end up with a mature partner up in prison, but without them, it would be universal behavior and not as exciting as a trip to the toilet.”
       “So there is a god, after all,” the boy murmured in small wonderment, “and he sets things up so it comes out just perfect, because nothing ever felt as perfect as sitting on your lap on this snowmobile does.”
       “It feels perfect to me, too, Pete,” the man whispered.
       
       “How would I get you to start touching me?” Pete said, slipping out of character.
       “That’s always hard for a child,” Kerb replied, also in the here-and-now, “but it’s also one of the most exciting parts.  A hustler can pump his hips and come right out with it, ‘hey, dude, you wanna piece of this?’  An overly reticent boy, on the other hand, can grow up never having the nerve to invite a partner, and misses out, as far as I’m concerned, on a hell of a lot.
       “That’s one of the things you can become acquainted with here at Fish and Fry,” the older male continued, now standing within inches of his almost naked nephew, his hands gently resting on the boy’s shoulders.  “You can’t exactly learn it; when it becomes a skill set, it becomes commercial, but a part you might be able to discover is that boys your age are allowed a lot of flexibility; leeway.  In other words, if you happened to approach a man who wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t go and haul you off to the cop shop; probably just chuck you under the chin and dismiss the invitation in an offhand and friendly manner, possibly suggesting someone who might be interested.  In special-ed classes, a lot of the boys masturbate openly at the back of the class, and it’s dismissed as an inconsequential aberration.  Everyone knows boys are curious and have a heightened interest, so any discreet expression is accepted.”
       
       “So I could say something?” Pete mused.
       “The man would give you lots of time,” his uncle replied.  “He’d love being with you if you both stayed in your riding suits and talked about baseball, or just sat listening to the silence of the winter woods.”
       “Would he say anything?” the boy then wanted to know.
       “He’s in the more tense situation,” Kerb replied, “a man can give a bemused shrug in deflecting the advances of a boy, and that’s that.  If he becomes the predator, even if it’s just to the extent of a suggestive comment, the child could freak out.  At a minimum, this might spoil their relationship, and it’s also possible the boy could literally call the cops.”
       “So it gets even more exciting as you get older?”
       “As you said,” Kerb replied, “god’s gone out and really pulled this puppy off.  He may let kids starve by the billions, but one thing you can’t fault the dude on is the fact that, yes, it does become more exciting.  To some extent, I guess it’s the thrill of the high-roller; prison through one door, and, through the others, a thrill, cheap word, beyond the power of money.  The ultimate winning hand.”
       “I think I thought of something,” the boy said after a pause, and slipped back into his act. 
       
       “Uncle Kerb,” he whispered, “if your hands are cold you could unzip me a little and put them inside my snow suit.”
       “They’re not too bad,” the driver said, “but it might warm things up if I tickled you a little.”
       “A little,” the boy agreed, “I’m too old to want to do stuff like a little kid.”
       “Do you have any favorite spot?” Kerb said, play-acting the business of putting his arms around the youth and tampering with his riding suit.
       “On my chest and under my arms,” the nervous boy said.
       “Are you wearing an undershirt?” Kerb asked.
       “Yes,” the child replied, “but you can pull it up out of the way.”
       “How long do you want me to stay inside your suit?” the young man asked as he pulled up the imaginary tee shirt and began molesting the eleven year old, running his hands lightly over the boy’s bare chest and stroking his heaving flanks.
       “I wanted to ask you some questions about a friend of mine, he’s nine,” the boy replied, “so it wouldn’t have to be too quick.”
       “Does it feel okay?” the elder male whispered.
       “About twice as good as I thought it would,” Pete panted, “and you’re still up pretty high on me.”
       
       “Okay,” the man said, “and about your friend, let me start of with a sermon, okay?”
       “It would help if I didn’t have to think,” Pete nodded.
       “Three categories of things that can happen with children your age, outside of actually being raped, okay?”
       “Okay.”
       “None, some, and too much.  I remember we watched that jungle to jungle movie, so that might be an example of too much.  The boy admits, offhandedly, about having ‘night fun’.  He was sharing a hut with other kids and they fooled around together in their hammocks after dark.  All the kids, every night.  It was a routine, no more special than bathing.  The other extreme is none; kids that are isolated from any activities by being fat, unlikable, or subjected to strict household rules.  Perfectly placed in the middle is the ‘some’ category.  It’s not routine, it’s entirely special, but it does happen.  You can talk about it with your friend.  Ask him, for example, which group he’d rather be in, the none group, possibly ‘saving for marriage’, or the every-night group, which eliminates the thrill of taboo and the intrigue of the  illicit and forbidden.”
       “Cool,” Pete whispered, “because that’s what I wanted to ask you.  What to say to him, you know, to be sure, like you’re being sure with me before you go down inside my underpants.”
       
       “You don’t have to say anything,” Kerb noted.  “For example, he could get in your lap while you’re playing a computer game.  You could fool around by nudging his head with your chin or something, then put a hand on his leg.  Children, even three year olds, are very sensitive to any kind of sensual contact, and he’ll quickly push you away if he feels uncomfortable, especially seeing that you are only a couple of years apart in age.  If he isn’t uncomfortable, you just gently touch him more and more, then ask him if he wants to talk about stuff, or anything.  He won’t be intimidated  by you, so he’ll answer honestly, and then you can start off with the background I just suggested, or pretty much anything you can think up.  After awhile, you might ask him if you can tell him a secret, then tell him about either the Fish and Fry or the snowmobiling experience, and do the same thing I did, earlier, when I asked if any other adults had touched you.  By that time, you’ll probably have both your hands up inside his shirt and you can come right out and ask him if he wants to try a dry shower, or a wet one, if you’re going to take one anyway.  It might even be an idea to give him a choice, thereby broaching the subject of open molestation on the oblique.”
       
       “Uncle Kerb,” Pete said after a minute, “it’s pretty warm with the sun.  Could I try taking my suit off and putting it over us like a blanket.”
       “If you’re sure about how you feel,” the young teacher whispered.
       “I am,” the boy responded.  This wasn’t theater suitable to a shower stall, so the young couple moved back to the bedroom.  Kerb sat on the side of the bed, his nephew in his lap.  “Open your suit, too,” the boy suggested, completing the mime of offing his boots and struggling out of his snowsuit, then pulling it over the two parked riders.
       His uncle pretended to unzip, then drew the boy slowly back against him, thrusting his huge erection against what was actually an almost naked boy’s bare back.
       “Can we do this up in your bedroom when we get home?” the boy asked as the man’s hands again stroked his slim chest and long, muscular legs.
       “Yes,” his uncle said, “but I’ve got to tell you something about your younger friend, okay?”
       “Yes,” Pete said.
       “Boys his age love to watch an older male cum, ejaculate.  The more semen you have, when it happens, the more excited he’ll be, and the more exciting as a lover.  So, if you plan to invite him over soon, we should stick to ourselves until your date.”
       “How long?”
       “Three days,” the man replied.  “The more the better, but until they start jerking off at night, boys cum in their sleep after five or six days, so there’s that to consider.”
       “I want it to be really awesome for him,” the eleven year old said.
       
       “What will be awesome is waiting,” his uncle observed.  “You’ll learn all about the ‘some zone’  When it’s over with you, you’ll both end up heaps of quivering jelly for at least five minutes, where the kids having night-fun giggle and go to sleep.”
       “And the kid in the ‘none-zone’ can’t get to sleep,” the boy added.
       “There ought not to be a law,” his uncle nodded as they lay back (against pillows) in their pretend snowmobile, the boy’s hands again behind the tall athlete’s neck as the man fondled him at the bands of his underpants.
       “If it happens out here will it make a mess of our riding suits?” the child whispered.
       “Yes,” his uncle said, “but there’s probably enough snow to clean up pretty well.”
       “If you take my undershirt and underpants off, we could use them, too,” Pete said.
       Again they mimed, except that Kerb did pull his nephew’s briefs down and off, positioning the boy on his lap so his erection jutted high between the youngster’s slim, white legs.  The eleven year old’s boner was over half the size of the man’s, very full for his tender years, circumcised, and very wet at the tip.  “Go ahead,” the young man coaxed the boy, and Pete reached forward and cupped his palm over the adult.  Kerb fondled the boy as well, and for long minutes they lay panting against their pillows, experimenting with masturbating each other.
       
       “You’re so big,” Pete whispered, “I could do this with you even if Kevin was lying back on me like I am on you.”
       “I’d cum really hard,” the man panted, tensing rapidly under the eleven year old’s now sure stroking, “if I was molesting both of you this way and there’d be plenty of sperm so you could wet your hand before you jerked him off, and he could make you cum with a slick hand, too.”
       “That must feel really amazing,” the younger male hissed, as his uncle grunted “I’m cumming,” and began showering the heaving chest and sweating belly with his hot, pulsing ejaculation.  He immediately wet his hand and found his nephew, stroking him fast and hard.  They preteen pumped his hips, flailing his legs wide apart and panting encouragement.  A minute, then two, and suddenly his straining body relaxed.  “I’m cumming,” he advised, lying almost calmly in his uncles arms as he watched jet after jet of his watery, hot fluid spurt into the air, falling back all over both of them and the bed.
       
       
       Pete was now braced against a tree as Allan took him from behind in the classic stance, bringing the boy to a modest level of intensity before they exchanged places, the boy jerking the man off until he climaxed, his semen splashing thickly against the bark.  Still shuddering, the writer wet his right hand and again huddled over the boy until the thirteen year old was writing and panting in his arms, cumming hard and fast, his sperm splashing on the slick trunk.
       
       They cleaned off the tree then dressed.  Returning to the brow of the incline, they sat talking for an hour, then exchanged sheets of paper and headed for home, visions of saving the world dancing in their heads, and both innocent of having lowered themselves to referring to the machine as a Sexway.
       
       				
       				THE END
       
Posted by Thomas@btl.net

xxx


