Photoplay – 5

by Feather Touch 


      Craig Butterfield paused at the front door of his house, shook the plastic bag in his left hand for reassurance and entered, calling, “Sorry I’m late, anybody home?”
      “Hey, guy, glad it’s not the cops calling with news of a mortal remains,” came a pleasant voice from the upstairs hall.
      “Hi, Andrew!” the boy yelped, dashing upstairs on his coltish legs.
      “In here.”  The voice called from his own bedroom and he skidded to a stop at the door.  “You okay? you are pretty late,” the handsome twenty eight year old said from Craig’s computer desk.
      “Fine,” the boy replied.  “I was having a long talk with Miss Williams.  She’s the school psychologist, plus teaches my biology class.”
      “Figured it was probably something innocent and enlightening,” the young man said with a welcoming smile.  “I’ve been availing myself of your absence to spy my brains out.  Neat damn thing, a hard-drive; there’s more about you than you probably remember, yourself, plus, you’re cute and perky enough in the brains department to bring out the worst in someone like me.”
      “I said you could,” the boy grinned, dropping to the bed beside his friend.
      “Yeah,” the man admitted, “but it’s more fun to pretend you didn’t.  To pretend I slipped in here with a lock pick and you’ve come home unexpectedly.”
      “Foiling your efforts to find references to my secret collection of Barbie dolls,” the boy sighed in play-sympathy.
      “Your mom and dad are outta here,” Andrew said, “flown the coop for a spontaneous weekend with old friends.  It was something to see.  They called about an hour ago and your mom started to beg off, years of conditioning at the mercy of a growing kid, I suppose, then she laughed and looked at your dad, then they both looked at me and said together, as husband and wife of long acquaintance do sometimes, ‘holy shit.’  Then she returned to the phone and said we’d love to meet you and we’re on our way.”
      
      “CEO of six hundred and you’re reduced to baby-sitting,” the boy continued in play sympathy, “and, pray tell, if you’ve been so demoted by the fickle finger of fate, where does that leave a kid like me?”
      “Embryonic,” the young man said.  “Therefore I’m free to curl up with a thick tome from your library and read my brains out until your parents are liberated from the perils of spur-of-the-moment adventure and return to nurture their quivering fetus in it’s tub of enriched gelatin.”
      “Yes, the good old days,” the boy mused, “no algebra.  But, come to think of it, I did happen to nail an X in class today, so, thanks to your e-mails on said grotesque subject, the reference is dated.”
      “Glad they’ve helped,” Andrew said, “it’s screaming important stuff, at least for some.  If there’s a golden scroll in existence, it’s a half-decent BS in maths.  Doesn’t mean you can’t be an English teacher, does mean you can be a doctor.”
      “They just teach it so left-field,” the boy responded, “droning formulas and clicking chalk, lifeless.  The stuff you sent on the ‘puter jumped right off the screen; how the symbolic abstraction actually allows you to find useful patterns in masses of data and separate the things you need.”
      “Get it, and you can fly,” the executive said, “best scholarships, not that you’ll be needing one, to the best schools.  It’s just a language; learn it and you’re plenty bright enough to be able to think in it, then create in it, though, truth to tell, I have a hard time imagining that there’s anything left TO create.”
      
      “Well,” the young genius said, “I sort of did stumble on a use.  Not to create new things of which we have, as you said, a lifetime supply on hand, but to fine tune what’s already out there.  Make it a little better, if possible, but more importantly, get the price down.  To reverse the old Detroit adage, not more cars, more car; not more tech, more techs, meaning more technology in everyone’s house.”
      “Well,” Andrew laughed, “you know where you have a job if your dad will keep his predatory hands off you.”
      “Actually,” Craig responded, “I’m just doing it to please you.  I’ll never need to work when I grow up; don’t even need to go to school, Dad’s made that clear since I was about eight.  I think kids lucky enough to have that kind of future should become involved in the arts.  If they have talent, use their resources to practice, if they don’t, support those who do.  I’m interested in the maths, like I said, partly to please you and my folks, and partly because it does illustrate patterns in what often seems chaotic, and that can’t help but being useful, but, in the end, I want to be a writer, and if I can’t make the grade in fiction, subscribe to a bunch of small magazines and find others who have what I don’t and send out the occasional fat check.”
      
      The man looked appraisingly at the boy sitting on the bed.  Get them reading enough, young enough, and look what happens.  “You’re right,” he whispered, “science is done.  We have all we need except perhaps in T-cells and cloning, exotic genetics and microbiology.  The cars have hardly improved an iota in ten or twenty years; appliances, almost everything you come in contact with in daily life is at best only incrementally better than what your mom hand when she was a kid, and most of it is little changed from what your grandmother had.  Even the mighty computer has been reduced to an appliance of boring reliability.  
      “In fact,” the adult went on, “I’ve a mind to cut YOU a check, since you brought the subject up, because you crystallized something that’s been nagging my unconscious for a year or more, specifically, that we should close out our research and development unit at Abrams Industries.  Do exactly what you just said, fine tune and bring down the cost of our widgets.”
      “Gotta be careful,” the boy responded.  “Ford used computers to wring the maximum profit out of every assembly, but undershot in their enthusiasm and turned out cars so defective their only recourse was to buy them back for cash.  Can’t buy a used Ford, because if the transmission hasn’t been maintained to the letter, it’ll fail, and how do you know, when you take the car in, if the technician changes the fluid in the first place?  Hard to do, have to drop the pan, and it’s fussy to reinstall without bitching up the gasket, and you can’t tell on the dipstick if the stuff is new or old.  Plus a host of other failures, most of them probably caused by shaving things on the cheap side.”
      “A big check,” Andrew allowed, to the boy’s happy smile.
      
      “What’s in the bag?” the man asked after a pause.
      “My secret collection,” Craig replied, coloring slightly and with a shy smile.
      “Thank god,” his friend said, “because your hard drive wouldn’t bring a blush to an angel.”
      “That’s more embarrassing than what’s in the bag,” Craig said.  “I’ve wasted away in the library, then got hooked on pre-algebra, and life just kind of passed me by.  Hard to know where to look when you don’t even know what you’re looking for, but then I had the talk with Miss Williams so there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
      “Well,” Andrew responded, “I was strictly kidding around.  That kind of thing is exclusively your business.”
      “Yes,” the boy nodded, “but if you’re all-at-once a baby-sitter then I can’t be more than seven, and if I’m seven I need help to wash my hair in the bathtub, because Mommy likes it when it smells of strawberries, and I’m too big a boy for my mommy to shampoo me.  Plus, if I’m seven I’m curious about everything, not like most big boys of eleven who know at least some of it, and I could ask you lots of questions and show you what I have in the bag I brought from Miss William’s clinic for the criminally insane.”
      
      “Do I have time to say ‘cheese’ for Chucky, or am I already dead?” the adult asked.
      “I don’t rightly know,” the boy drawled, “Miss William’s story seemed like one near-death experience after another, and there wasn’t time for me to ask about any survivors.”
      “She sounds like an engaging raconteur,” Andrew allowed.
      “They were very personal and very graphic,” the boy said, his voice now husky.  “Very detailed about things that happened between her brother, when he was my age, and his baseball coach, who was thirty.  Some of the events took place in a story the coach, Gaff, told Brandon, her brother, and some of it she saw with her own eyes, spying from under a blanket.”
      “I see,” the adult said slowly, obviously at a loss for words.
      “She emphasized,” the boy whispered, “that Gaff got Brandon’s permission for everything that happened, knew that he was completely willing before anything started, even storytelling.  She said I should do the same with you.  I want to do something with you.  It’s not play because it’s too intense, and it isn’t really falling in love and finding the perfect picket fence to happily-ever-after behind.  It’s in between.  A ritual, in her words.  A ritual that develops after a little initial experimentation.  Serious, but nothing out of Eugene O’Neill.  She said I should be as frank and upfront as I could and stressed the fact that some men aren’t interested in boys under any circumstances, and that there are plenty of other things we can do together.”
      
      “I suppose a theory would be,” Andrew said, still seeming to have difficulty finding words, “that it’s best to go from a state of ignorance to enlightenment, fully, in one place and at one time, especially seeing as lingering half way between the  two states artificially enhances their importance.”
      “That was her main theme, exactly,” the boy responded.  “How once you’ve had a few full experiences you can put the whole matter in it’s proper place and get on with other things, like good-old algebra and geometry.”
      “There’s actually a correlation in clinical biology,” Andrew observed.  “Kids brought up on formula and with sterile housekeeping  have a much higher risk of allergies and disease because their immune systems don’t develop naturally, which amounts to a life-long disaster for them and society.  And I guess it’s not too great a stretch to assume the same thing about psychological development.  Denial of the natural leads to ignorance and disorientation.  Some of the examples are pretty horrendous,” he went on, “for instance, in the Hispanic countries the women are castrated by the pope whose emissaries, high and low, tell them only prostitutes – putas – enjoy the touch of a male while wives acquiesce only in order to have children and satisfy animal instincts.  In the here and now, there are the princes of self-esteem, the square-jawed, hard-eyed elite – never touched, never would touch – free of doubts or concerns on the matter.  They’re kind of neat in the abstract, but in reality they tend to be monochromatic deadheads, perhaps useful for the skill sets they bring to the workplace, but of little civic interest beyond their obsession with building Herculean stadiums in poor cities.  At the same time, those of a more flexible bent write for the magazines you were talking about and find ways to contribute in many areas, specifically including high-grade pornography which just happens to be the foundation of the entire Internet and World Wide Web, and to this very day is responsible for thirty percent of the traffic.”
      “So we’re not going to jump in the car and head for the mall?” the boy asked with his beautiful, shy smile.
      “You’ve given me my out,” Andrew chuckled, “and I slammed that particular door right in your plenty-cute face.”
      “Shoot,” the boy rejoined, “I’ve never been there.”
      “I’ll just bet you haven’t,” the man responded.
      “It’s not contrarian,” Craig added, “not that I’m proud of being the only kid in school who doesn’t know a food court from an escalator, it’s just that any big store gives me the willies multiplied by the creeps.  Why does anyone want all that stuff?  Doesn’t someone have to dust it off and take care of it?  What do you do with it?  All my friends that come over tune in right away.  We live in a regular neighborhood.  Bookshelves and used furniture, tables piled with magazines.  That’s why I’ll never have to work, because some of the dough for snazz goes for books and magazines, I suppose on the theory I might one day be able to think, and the rest goes into investments, which I guess would be pretty stupid if everyone else wasn’t out buying the stuff dad and mom invest in.”
      
      “Lots of levels of elite,” Andrew mused.  “If the bottom is the Ethiopian infant and the top is vacant because no supreme writer is recognized, that leaves many levels at which you can excel over your contemporaries and come out far ahead of average, which is a Good Thing, because there are also a thousand cracks you can fall through while the herd is milling in the pasture.”
      “Well,” the boy simplified, “I don’t consciously avoid the mall and Mikey and Kelly, my best friends, never go there, though I think they’ve both been there, so it’s just how things worked out.  In fact, it even surprised me when you joked – please tell me you were joking – about it and I realized I’ve never even been in the parking lot.”
      
      With that they let the subject drop and sat silently looking at each other for several comfortable minutes.  “It’s awesome having the whole weekend alone with you,” Andrew said, breaking the silence, “and really, we can do anything you want.”
      “I’m trying to think,” the boy responded, which, as far as his friend could see, was akin to Mt. Everest trying to be tall or NASA manned-space division trying to be pointless.
      
      “Well, I don’t really know what to say next,” the adult responded.  “I declined your gracious offer of a Bobsey-Twins weekend, yet I don’t exactly want to jump on top of you and teach you ten dirty tricks in three minutes.”
      “In Miss William’s stories,” the boy responded, “there was a lot of talk.  When the older boys taught the kids or the men taught the boys it wasn’t just something physical, they spent a long time telling about things that had happened or even telling about things they fantasized and wanted to happen.  I mean, it was totally exciting just listening, so it’s pretty hard to imagine what it was actually like for Brandon and Eddy and the others, to talk about it with someone who was actually going to put his hands up under your shirt and molest you.”
      “Do you want that to happen with us?” Andrew asked, “because we have the whole weekend footloose and fancy-free.”
      “Yes,” the boy whispered huskily.
      “I want it too,” his friend said softly, “and what I thought, since the subject has been broached, is that at some point we might experiment by reverting to the roles of adult male baby-sitter and curious seven year old, including the bath tub.”
      “Okay,” Craig nodded with a blush.
      “And no need to waste hot water,” Andrew said, “so it will just be a pretend bath.  We can spread some towels on the bottom of the tub so you’ll be comfortable.”
      “Okay,” the boy said again, adding: “that way I won’t get wrinkled if it turns out to be a long bath.”  Both nodded sagely because wisdom is a pleasure even in the most prosaic matters.
      
      “One thing you’ve got to tell me, though,” Andrew said after a few moments during which each envisioned what was going to happen in the bathroom, “is about Mikey and Kelly and your other friends.  Number one, two, and three rule is that nothing interferes with your normal activities – no ‘Craig can’t come out an play right now’ from this baby-sitter.”
      “That’s like Miss Williams, too,” the boy responded.
      “Cool,” the man said, “she does sound rather more dialed-in than average.”
      “She was lucky,” the boy nodded, “she admits it.  And she thinks I am, too, with which I agree.”
      “So,” the man went on, “if I’m going to quiz you a little, what about boys your own age?  It’s common for pre-teens to become interested in each other and establish rituals.  Are Mikey and Kelly attractive to you?”
      “Mikey is,” the boy said, coloring.  “Plus he lives with his older cousin, a nineteen year old named Jans.  He’s super tall.  Kelly’s nice, but he’s chubby, and, while I hate to develop prejudices while I’m still having trouble spelling the word, I just want to be regular friends.  Same with the others, they’re nice, and most of them read so they’re not dumb to talk to, or anything, but there’s just something about a person who’s round where he should be flat.”
      “Our specialty as a nation is unnatural selection,” Andrew said.  “We divert resources, wholesale, from the young to keep the old not only alive, but splendiferous on fat pensions, benefits, and social security.  We prohibit kids from activities which, at least in many cases, would both impel and compel them to stay slim and fit like the boy at whose computer I’m sitting.  And, on top of it all, we send over endless flights of balloons which shower credit cards on the masses, so the unfit are given temporary means to fit in.  What’s become unnatural is literacy beyond the first-date ritual that goes: ‘Isn’t Hemingway great?’ to the response of: ‘and Fitzgerald, too, he’s sooo awesome,’ at which point the conversation stalls, big time, and the couple spends the rest of the evening trying to find something interesting about Spears or Lo to talk about.  With zilch to say, long-term relationships become more neurotic than loneliness is boring, so it’s the ‘fridge and the tube because you never meet anyone worth being fit for.”
      
      “That fits a lot, just of the people I know in my infinitesimal world,” the boy noted.
      “They’ve ravaged both landscape and cultural patterns with malls and endless tacky churches,” the executive said, “which gives a kid like you – an exception to what is rapidly becoming the rule of rules – extra cause to give thanks, first, for the fact you’re not included, and, second, for the fact they’ve shown the conventional set of principles and morals is defective, with the added bonus of being so defective it would be very unlikely to come up with anything worse, thus allowing you the freedom to try anything you want short of hurting others.
      “And it gets even simpler,” the older male concluded, “because all evidence points plainly to the fact we are living at the end of times, so a what-the-hell factor kicks in, as it frequently has in vanished civilizations of the past.  Decadents from Romans to Mayans.  It’s actually a relatively rare phenomenon, many societies have not only progressed, more or less linearly but done so under extremes of pressure.  But in the current sphere, civilization has advanced to the point of necessity, and any retreat into hedonism will result in rifts that will bring not only bring us down, but bring us down having lost the rudimentary skills with crude tools and elementary resources to hang on while we regroup and reinvent.  We’re like that rocket that blew up in a Nebraska silo.  It carried a turret of hydrogen bombs, but a technician dropped a wrench, it pierced the skin of a fuel cell, and the thing blew sky-high even without its bombs going off.  
      “Nor is it all doom and gloom and pessimism,” the man added, “because you and I are getting, for however long, to live in a world of engagement and convenience beyond the science fiction of even thirty years ago.  Computers, Net, digital photography.  A year in our lives is more intense and enriched than whole lifetimes of entire cities of the past where only a tiny faction of the population were stimulated beyond the rather grubby matter of just staying alive and dressed.  So that’s one half of the perfect equation, the other half is that we get to leave nothing behind.  That’s psychological – abstract - and has been a deathbed burden for the few and the rich for millennia, leaving a growing and advancing world.  We get to check out of the resort on its best day of operation, and with it burning brightly behind us, and, assuming this if not actually knowing this, make our own rules simply because no rules are relevant in a future built on ignoring so many fundamental principles for so long, and, finally, lack of even that future.”
      
      “The more you love life, the more you hate to leave it,” Craig summarized, “unless it becomes obvious there will soon be nothing to love, then it’s okay.”
      “Precisely,” his friend says, “and the only antidote is to live each day to the fullest and get the most out of it while at the same time being conscious of the fact that no one has ever had it one-millionth as good as we do.
      “And the real tragedy is,” Andrew went on, “is that we live in an age of issues instead of interests.  Aside from cyberspace, no one is interested in anything these days, it’s all where’s my inhaler or doesn’t your cable carry the Playboy Channel.  In my day we were zombied by way too much, a kaleidoscope of flashing interests that distracted more than informed, and for you guys it’s three times worse.  All union teachers, instead of a few, all malls and McDonald’s, instead of a few, and all issues for everyone instead of a few, with issues extreme to the point California no longer allows smoking in bars – the health issue – a degree of social engineering Hitler and Stalin’s thugs would have laughed off the rule book.
      “And this is all directly related to what we want to happen later on.  As much as anything, I want you to appreciate it from the philosophical standpoint.  What a privilege it is for us to be sharing it when millions and billions just as good as we are got and get to share nothing but hunger, cold, war, disease, and misery.  In short, to engage your intellect before you let me disengage your belt buckle and to take an interest in what happens after that, rather than letting it become an issue, and then parlay it into a long-term interest in others, partly physical, mostly not.”
      
      “I like it because it is so complicated,” Craig said.  “’The essential America has been buried under so many waves of divergent culturalism it no longer amounts to anything more than a historical reference point, more embarrassing than useful.  Under such conditions of chaos – the kind that follows Jews everywhere – there’s not much point in getting involved, and the greatest freedom possible in a society in decline is freedom from it.”
      
      “All the world’s a stage,” Andrew said, picking up the kindred train of the boy’s narrative, “and the cast has been putting on a great show for a long time.  No utopian blandness for el mundo.  If the church didn’t do it the heathen did, with Mums Nature adding a trick or two of her own.  And having seventh-row-center seats due to being born rich and American we owe, but, as you say, how on earth do we go about paying?  What is there we can contribute that would make the slightest difference?  If everyone is equal to us, by fiat, why would anyone listen or respond?  We’re not better than anyone else in a dozen ways, so there’s a Dahmer for every Idi Amin, and we’re eminently criticizeable, but, through superiority on a number of fronts, we’ve become the head of the horse, however, and it’s a big ‘how’ and a big ‘ever,’ with everybody equal and no need to respect or acknowledge, much less obey, every hoof is a head; old people, black people, unionists, socialists, and Klanoids.”
      “Sounds more like a centipede,” the boy noted.
      
      Their thoughts may have been wandering but their eyes remain glued to each other, that kind you see so everlastingly on television that it should have its own cable channel: hot glue.  Temporizing, man and boy equally salivatious in licking his chops over the thought of seeing and touching the other.  And was their interest elemental?  In a chaotic world would it substitute for common sense, boylove and its reciprocate replace the doomed inanity of democracy and leftist politics?  On an individual basis, it was a force so compelling men married women and went to the considerable expense in both energy and money to raise a little flock of their own.  Went to other extraordinary lengths driven by the entirely natural curiosity over what little Timmy would look like without his underpants and how his little hand would feel in place of your own.  And if the individual imperative was thus, might not a cultural paradigm follow?  It seemed far-fetched, perhaps even way-far-fetched, but current ideologies and orientations were stretched beyond the pale, and so perhaps the merely “far out” amounted to a safety zone half way back, a comforting thought when the alternative was a return to the universal subjugation of  Calvinist Victorianism.  Maybe twenty or thirty years of openness and tolerance, hey, the Greeks managed it for centuries (plus it had nothing whatever to do with the ancient state’s downfall; in fact, probably provided an incentive for keeping it together until the barbarians reached the gate), and, if after that fair and open trial, it really doesn’t seem to be working out, we can retreat to the era of Jane Austen, no problem because we’ll still be alive to do so, and that has to be over half the battle.
      
      “Where do you think you’ll go from here?” Andrew asked the boy, their incipient homosexual experience implied in the question.
      “Any bar I find open after the brothels close,” the boy said, “and lots of loitering in public toilets, lingering on park benches, and skulking in bushes.”
      “The algebra world’s loss,” the man sighed, but, brightening artificially, he added: “the clinical world’s gain.  So many diseases, so little time.”
      “Oh,” Craig responded, “I didn’t think about that.  Maybe the first-grade playground would be a better idea.”
      “Probably not to that extreme,” the man noted, “but, at the same time, the occasional six year old loves to experiment just as much as a boy your age, and if they are willing and eager, they make outrageously outstanding lovers, even if they tend to giggle a bit while you’re spraying hot sperm all over their wriggling little thighs.”
      “I guess that would feel nice,” the boy allowed.
      “How do you think you’d have felt at that age?” Andrew quizzed, “if there’d been a cute sixteen year old lifeguard at the pool, for example, and he’d asked you to stay after closing to help clean up?  If you knew other boys whispered about being alone with him?  Then if his voice got froggy and he started asking your personal questions like if you had a girlfriend?  Would you stand still when he came close up behind you and put his hands on your shoulders, or tell him to shove off?”
      “I don’t think I’d say anything, if he was nice,” the eleven year old replied.
      
      “It’s my theory,” the man said, “that in such a setting, emphasizing the ‘nice’ you just mentioned, every boy of maybe a hundred would be happy to stay after, individually or in small groups.  Further, it is my considered opinion that eating and similar addictions and disorders are directly traceable to interference with traditional and natural patterns by a meddling church, which rarely meddles successfully in anything beyond fleecing its congregations.”
      “But that makes it more exciting for us,” the astute boy pointed out, “if I’d started when I was six, and been with any number of adults I fancied, I wouldn’t be sitting here, now, half turned inside out with something way beyond excitement at the thought of seeing you naked and feeling you touch me.”
      “Seems,” the adult mused, “contemporary society has already given us enough gifts in providing a stage show and in tying itself into a Gordian knot, pointless to deal with, and our extreme privilege in ending our lives at the end of all lives worth living, in the first pace, and it would be tempting fate to accept one more, especially something as tantalizing as you suggest, which I guess amounts to psychic overtones.”
      
      “Does that mean we’re going to the mall?” the boy asked, quaking in front of his friend, but, because other thoughts uppermost in his noodle, not breaking out in a fit of giggles.
      “Only if you believe in utter nonsense,” the executive replied.
      “Millions do,” Craig said, a note of play-warning in his voice, “only they call it religion or astrology.”
      “Hell’s most ravenous hound,” Andrew said, “I consider myself duly cautioned,” and added: “seriously, I don’t want to pry but I am interested in any ideas you might have for continuing experiences, because I do have an idea on the subject if you don’t have any specific plans, not that they can be very specific, but you know what I mean.”
      “Mikey,” the boy responded.  “Mikey and his cousin, Jans, if they want to, but what’s your idea?”
      
      The executive boy gave his beautiful young friend a long, steady look.  The boy sensed his world about to completely flip, nor was his instinct wrong.  The athletic adult spoke: “There’s a nudist park an hour or so from here,” he said.  “There are lots of rules about getting in; B personality, health, fitness, freedom from psychosis or any hint of sadistic impulses, that kind of thing, but beyond sensible standards of propriety, no rules once you’re past the gates. I took my paperboy there a couple of years ago and he loved it.  I could take you and once you’re a member you could invite Mikey and Jans sometime.”
      “Would other men want to touch me?” the boy whispered, coloring beautifully.
      “Yes,” Andrew said, “there are four or five adults per child because the theory is boys should have occasional experiences of being, well, for want of a better word, satiated.  Wallowing in it, so to speak.  Watching other boys get molested while a man’s touching them, and being molested by maybe four or five young, fit adults out in the woods, then coming back to the pool with sperm all over your chest and belly.  Overindulgence.  Having man after man ejaculate in your mouth.  The theory of the owner is that such exposure blunts any tendency toward addiction.  If you know you can go wild once in awhile, beyond anything likely to happen in your home setting, you can put it on the proverbial back burner.”
      “And you’d watch while other men did things with me?” the now panting boy asked.
      
      “Yes,” Andrew whispered, “watch you take the cum of young athletes and hold you while you ejaculated in their mouths.”
      “And you’d stay with me the whole time?”
      “At first,” the man promised, “but you’d probably want to be alone at least once in awhile after you’re used to it.”
      “And that would be okay?”
      “The most erotic thing in a man/boy relationship,” the older male answered, “is watching your boy walk off hand-in-hand with a cute nineteen year old.”
      “I’d like to go,” Craig said.
      “Okay,” Andrew responded.  “Your mom and dad left a number.  I’ll give them the name of the club and tell them what’s up.”
      “Cool,” the boy answered, so excited his vocabulary bowed to the emotions of the moment.
      “And the club has a special rule I forgot to tell you about,” Andrew added, “the boy has to drive there.”
      No vocabulary would fit an eleven year old in such a situation, so Craig just nodded dumbly.
      
      “Oh, wow, there’s girls, too,” Craig whispered at the door of the dining room.
      “And you know how to drive,” Andrew chuckled to a squeeze from the nervous child’s hand.  Yet the setting was apple-pie prosaic, everyone neatly dressed, some hundred or more athletic males with maybe twenty kids, mostly slim boys, scattered about.  The headwaiter escorted them to a table and a cart arrived laden with steaming hot Mexican dishes on the theory the clientele was faced with enough choices and dilemmas not to wish being bothered with long menus and fussy fussing.
      
      There was no dancing; in fact the ambience of the LoveLess resort was, if anything, a-gay.  No sweetness and cuddling at the tables, no things with the eyes, much closer to an athletic or military training camp; loquacious, open, and friendly.  The food came, the dishes went, and the aperitif was provided by a nine-year-old cigarette girl dressed in a bikini and offering fine, fat joints from a cigar box, the drape of her tiny bathing suit unmarred by unsightly wads of money because it wasn’t that kind of a place.
      
      “Where’s everyone going?” Crag asked as a number of patrons got up and headed for the kitchen.
      “To help with the dishes,” the host said, “it’s a tradition.  Most resorts are studies in boredom after the first day or two and you’ve tired of the novelty acts dreamed up on Madison Avenue, so by tradition the guests help with running the place.  Cook under the supervision of the chef and clean up afterwards.  Clean their own rooms.  Do the laundry.  Helps provide a back drop of real-world normalcy for what happens at other times.”
      
      “Maybe the last refuge of genius is sex,” Craig observed, obviously responsive to the contrasts implied.
      “When LoveLess is in the malls,” Andrew responded, “there’ll be some sign of hope for intelligent life, ‘till then, it’s every man for himself.”
      “Can I go help with the dishes?” the boy asked.
      “Absolutely,” his friend laughed, delighted at seeing every sign of the health he’d anticipated in the eleven year old.  And so Craig helped himself to a long draw from the refer and departed for a world of suds and soap, adding a ringing note of perspective to our story of his various adventures.
      
      “Nobody tried anything,” he said half an hour later when he joined Andrew in their room.
      “It’s pretty zoned here,” Andrew explained.  “The rooms and back pool, plus the extensive grounds behind the back pool are open, the front pool, dining room, and other public areas are restricted to conventional attire and behavior.  You could lie naked on a platter surrounded by succulent fruit and bestrewn with garlands of orchids and no one would even look at you until the platter was wheeled into an open area.  A miniature of life, as it’s intended to be; a millions looks to the touch, something like that.  An abeyance of discipline, where and when appropriate, paid for with strict conformity the rest of the time.  It doesn’t work for heroine, because it’s chemically addictive, and it doesn’t work for eating disorders, because we’re descended from pigs, but it does work for illegal sex.  Why take the chance of getting locked up, so you can’t come here again?”
      “And why get fat so you won’t be invited,” the boy added, scoring a mid-forehead bull’s-eye with his handsome mentor.
      
      “Okay,” Andrew said, “now for one of several secrets.  You ready?”
      “Yes,” the practically chirping boy replied.
      The man got up from his chair and extended his hand to the youth.  For the first time they touched, and Andrew led his charge to the back of the room, opening a small door that Craig hadn’t even noticed.  “It’s sad there are no windows,” he said, “and this is the reason why.”  He led the boy through the hatchway and they emerged into a carpeted tunnel which stretched down the long arm of rooms.  Nothing could have been more intriguing to an eleven year old, and the boy proceeded without urging, crawling slowly along as his man followed.  In a few moments they came to a series old-fashioned door locks let into the woodwork of the crawlspace, the kind with keyholes   There was room for the two to kneel side by side and peek, leaving a narrow space (undoubtedly the reason for the strict weight standards of the institution) behind them for others to pass if they wished. 
      
      “Oh, I’m gonna wake up, I just know it,” the boy whispered, his eyes practically bugging out of his head.  Down the miniature hallway, another hatch opened and another couple crawled to a nearby keyhole.  
      “We’re in a ‘creep’ room, tonight,” Andrew explained, his left arm going around the child at his side.  “That’s one night in three.  The other two nights, it’s a ‘stay’ room.”
      “Must be fire regulations,” the boy whispered, eliciting a hard squeeze for overt cuteness from his adult friend.  Several more couples entered the clandestine (mentioned nowhere in the brochure, that is) enclosure, each finding spy holes in a matter of minutes.
      “There are cabins like this in the outback,” Andrew noted, “with holes in the walls.”
      “It’s awesome to watch,” Craig whispered, eyes hot-glued to his antique lock.
      “I think we’re pretty lucky,” his friend added, “two older teens with a girl who looks about ten is a less common situation.”  With this, he reached up and turned a knob situated above their vantage point, indicating, as he did so, the row of clothing hooks extending several feet on either side of the comfortably furnished confines of the secret passage.  The knob was for an amplifier hooked to what were obviously very expensive microphones placed near the bed where the girl sat between the two tall, handsome males.  It picked up every word and whisper.
      
      “Is it okay, so far, sis?” the boy on the right said, “because they have special rooms with locks on the door if you change your mind.”
      “I’m just really nervous, Paul,” the child replied.  “Marcy’s so much more developed than I am.”
      The other teen spoke.  “Sweetheart,” he said, “that’s because she’s been with Mark and our dad and me for a month, ever since her tenth birthday.  She needed a bra within a few weeks and had to go on the pill.  But we can’t do it with you, even with your brother’s help, because of physical limitations, but it can happen for you here.  You can be with a number of older boys and men and Paul will have you in the lingerie department even faster than we had to take Marcy.”
      
      The threesome sat silently on the bed for some moments allowing time for 
Andrew and Craig to divert their attention and stare at each other.
      “Is that true?” he whispered.
      “I don’t know,” Andrew said, “but it may go with what we were talking about earlier, about artificial foods leading to children with allergies and diseases; maybe unnatural chastity is likewise a cause of deformation; that a female develops naturally only if she’s exposed to the semen of a number of males as she matures.  Probably the way it was for the first million or so years of our development.”
      “And now we’re retreating to the status of pigs in its absence,” the young genius nodded, to another squeeze from the powerful athlete at his right flank.  Thoughts best held for their next visit to Starbucks.  They peeked again, appreciating the comfortable ergonomics of their setting, enhanced by numerous throw pillows which came in handy for padding and bracing.  They gripped the handsome wood handholds beside the spy station and again peered into the softly lighted room.
      
      “And we don’t get romantic,” the other boy was telling the little girl.  “It’s not that, has nothing to do with who you like on the outside, other than the interest any boy would take with his younger sister’s friends and dates – you know, creeps with big eyes and a precious spangle of hair over their brows – it’s almost like doctor and patient or teacher and student.  It feels incredible and its natural and healthy.  End of story.  Jenny McPherson did end up married to her brother after they changed her name and fiddled around with the law a little, and they have four great kids, but that’s pretty rare.  It happens with us, it’s fantastic while it’s happening, and eventually we go on to find husbands and wives, not just like other kids do, but more successfully; more kids, less divorces, because things are less secretive and more natural.”
      “Doug, was Marcy as scared as I am on HER birthday?” the girl asked.
      “No,” the young man replied.  “We’d talked about it with her, and it was just incest, no resort full of handsome strangers to kind of boggle her mind.”
       
      “Poor kid,” the skinny, redhead sporting a tomboy mop and twenty-gauge load of freckles shot across her schoolgirl face, said
      “It’s just how it worked out, Mary,” the one called Paul said, “she was first, but yours may be more spectacular.”
      “Does stuff happen,” the girl whispered, “like you, Paul, marrying Marcy, and Doug marrying me?”
      “Exactly,” Doug said, “and either living together at various times or spending a lot of time together, if it’s more comfortable maintaining separate households.  The thing that rarely happens is that couples move away.  The cities and corporate perks may be appealing to some, and it’s probably a good thing they are common motives, but nothing beats close family relationships with a few strangers included for variety and spice, though not in so many words.”
      “I know I’d like to stay here with both of you for a long time,” the girl said.
      Paul responded.  “Just feel lucky we have what we do, sis,” he suggested, “while other kids are getting eight hours a day of Bozo and whatever other manic trash our Jews toss to the airwaves.”
      
      Andrew and Craig squeezed each other in acknowledgement of the pleasure of spying on healthy Americans.  (Yet they’d noted in the dining room that while not predominate, couples and groups of obviously African and other ethnicities were liberally scattered among the many tables.  Prejudice was encouraged, bigotry deemed silly.)
      
      “Even the Japanese have been corrupted,” Craig whispered, both turning to face each other and enjoying the not inconsiderable luxury of being able to break from spying on a trio not all paws and squealing grunts.  But much happens unexpectedly in a complex world and a couple down the little hallway turned up a speaker
      
      “Uncle Jeff,” a young girl’s voice squealed as the couple below the keyhole huddled together, “you feel just like Daddy, do I feel just like Polly?”
      “Yes, Millie,” a husky young male voice responded, “just as beautiful as my own baby, and you know what?”
      “What,” the girl hissed.
      “I can feel your dad’s semen up inside you just like your daddy can feel mine if he’s inside Polly now.”
      “Let’s call them and find out,” the girl panted.  “I want to thank Daddy, too, for letting you bring me here.”
      “Yes, darling,” the man said.
      “Is Polly good at making it last, too?” what was obviously a bright-eyed child asked.
      
      The speaker volume lowered and Craig finished his thought as they returned to watching Paul, a strapping blond with a swimmer’s haircut and build,  blue eyes, and his waifish ten year old sister.  “’Dragonball-Z,’ he said, “if that isn’t innuendo then what is, for kids half my freaking age.  And blowing up planets like they were popcorn, what does that tell the kids who have no one to accompany them in the shower or bedroom?  Muck and claptrap from all over the world.”
      “It’s what you said before,” Andrew said as they again spied, “an insidious influence of the cheap, shoddy, and lowest common denominator, plus their unions have lowered the standard of mainstream literacy to a point they’ve a mass audience for the most worthless of products.  Fortunately, the Anglos and Asians have provided compensating resources so we can watch and laugh without a thought in the world as to the future stolen in the name of: ‘well, it isn’t against the law.’  And Sam Walton’s reign as king of the hill shows the universal nature of an infection with no natural enemies in a pro-Hebrew climate, which doesn’t need to be ‘pro,’ at all, they’ll do that part if merely tolerated.  It’s the ultimate social cancer and we’re its final victims.  Mysterious ways, because in backhand it turns out to be our ultimate gift, the freedom from a future.”
      “Your mouth to god’s ear,” the child whispered and both fell silent, turning up the speaker slightly.
      
      “And how about Dad,” Mary was saying to the teens sitting beside her, all three dressed in the neat khaki cargo shorts and crisp white shirts which were a de facto uniform of the LoveLess resort.
      “That just depends on how you feel about him in other ways,” Doug said at a nod from the brother, “if you like him – and there’s no special reason you should or shouldn’t, it doesn’t work that way – and find him physically attractive, which it would be, to editorialize a little, impossible not to do, then you should go to him and tell him what happened here with Paul and me.  Marcy was raped by our dad before she went to Mark, then came to me, but that’s just how it happened in our situation.”
      “How many times did he rape her before your brother found out,” the girl whispered hoarsely.
      “Three times on a picnic,” the teen replied, “and she went to Mark’s room after supper, and came to mine a couple of hours later.”
      “Did she stay all night with you?” the pixie wanted to know.
      “Yes,” Doug whispered.
      “Could you feel what had happened inside her from your dad and Mark, like the girl on the speaker was asking her uncle?” the child whispered.
      “Yes,” the seventeen year old said, “their cum made her very wet and sort of tingly feeling, plus knowing that about a girl, that’s she’s carrying another male’s sperm, triggers basic instincts, so it was extra exciting for both of us.”
      “And she cummed while she was holding you against her?” the girl asked, displaying a non-militant feminine side.
      “She’d been too scared on the picnic and with Mark,” Doug said, “but I was closest to her age, and was extra physical with her because of how she felt and knowing she’d been both mounted and repeatedly freshened, as we say on the ranch, so, yes, it happened with her at the same time it was happening with me.”
      “And during the rest of the night?” the curious girl asked.
      “Again and again, maybe seven or eight times for both of us,” the boy said, blushing.
      “And always with you up inside her?” was the next question.
      “No,” Doug said.  “We got pretty comfortable with each other after cumming together, so she wanted to experiment with using her hands and her mouth, stuff she’d heard about at school.”
      
      There was a pause.  Again a speaker down the mini-hall was turned up.  “Kip,” another husky young adult voice said, “it’s okay to tell the other scouts.  It’s a half secret; something that happens to lots of boys.  You just have to be careful.  For example, you could tell Kenny Mills and Roger Tory, they’re both intelligent, probably almost anyone you like.  If you tell them, some of them might have stories to tell you.  That’s a good way to decide if you want to try touching.  What I’m doing inside your underpants is this and that to this and that segment of society, but, in general, is highly tolerated.  Your main adversary will be fat kids who never get the chance and are often mean in other respects.  That’s why it’s a half secret.  Tell the kids you like, boy or girl, the friends you feel comfortable with, especially if you’re alone together, like out in the woods or on a sleepover, and never act gushy or effeminate so the others get a hint.”
      “I wouldn’t want anyone to mess it up,” a panting preteen voice said.
      “A lot of men will do this with you for the next couple of days,” the older voice said, “so if the worst did happen, you’ll have still had something really special.”
      
      Again, the speaker became inaudible, its inspiration duly noted.  “Do you ever touch each other when you’re alone together?” the girl asked her two male companions.
      “Yes,” Doug replied, “and not only that, we learned about it in scouts, but different troops.”
      “So you talked about it like that scout leader suggested?” the girl queried.
      “Yes,” Doug said, “like we’re doing with you.  We were both lucky that we took the long route instead of a lot of shortcuts.”
      “I like it, too,” the girl said.  “Knowing it’s going to happen, and still being a virgin.”
      “That’s why we brought you here,” the brother noted, “because we have plenty of time.  We didn’t come to wash the dishes, that’s for fun, we came to be sure your first time was something you’d treasure and remember for a long time.  Millie wasn’t playing a game with her uncle, she wants to store up the memories one by one, like we want you to do, so they don’t get tangled and confusing.”
      Andrew and Craig withdrew for a moment to nod at the wisdom of the tyke between the two powerful young adults.  Wise was as wise said.
      
      “And,” they heard her voice continue, “what I want to remember, now, is the three of us sitting here all dressed for the dining hall.  I am, in fact, somewhat anxious to make that a memory.”  
      
      Don’t grow ‘em any cuter (except Samantha, who simply rules), and her males responded by standing in front of the little girl.  She began on Doug’s buttons, kneeling on the bed to reach.  Again Andrew and his young friend left their positions, the boy’s fingers going quickly and working nimbly, as Andrew’s did, also.  Quickly bare chested, their shirts hanging on the convenient hooks, they returned to see both half-naked teens, their shirts neatly folder over a chair back, kneeling in front of the doll-size female, stripping the child out of her blouse.
      
      As Doug had said, it was more clinical than romantic.  They didn’t kiss and fondle the girl, they undid her shorts and removed them, then stood as she, dressed in panda bear panties, engaged herself with the heavier belts and fabric of the two near-adults.  The hallway was cramped for undressing but Andrew and Craig nonetheless managed to disrobe to their underwear within a minute or two and resumed their positions, only this time with the adult using the upper of the keyholes (mounted side-by-side in vertical pairs) as he crouched over the boy at the lower spy hole.  In a few moments they’d arranged pillows to make themselves comfortable, and were back in voyeur heaven.
      
      All three were now naked, Paul and Doug in full display as the girl experimented with standing on the bed so she could run her fingers down over their two panting bodies.  The athletes arched to her touch, their huge erections pulsing visibly as the naked girl fondled and explored, panting as hard as the boys.
      
      “Did Marcy tell you everything about the picnic?” Mary asked Doug, her fingers tracing ever lower on the belly of the beautiful young stallion.
      “Yes,” came the ragged response.  “She said it didn’t happen inside her the first time.  That it happened all over her font where she could see everything.”
      “Did she like that?” the girl then asked.
      “Sis loved it,” the boy said, “and she said it gave her a beautiful image to hold in her head while she felt us cumming in her later on.”
      
      “I want that, too,” Mary whispered, now kneeling and exploring her highly aroused beauties, “but I want to have my first cum with my brother in my arms, and it sounds as if that would be more likely if I was wet from you, Doug.”
      “That’s right,” the teen gasped as the ten year old took him in her left hand and began fondling his swollen glans with her right.  Amazingly, he was able to continue half-coherent speech.  “And it will be even more likely if Paul cums on your chest, first; that will make it so he can stay in control longer so you can go all the way while you still have him inside you.”
      
      “This should keep you from ever turning anything to do with gay,” Andrew murmured to the boy beneath him, as he manipulated the eleven year old’s underepants down over his knees and off, then stripped out of his own briefs.
      “Do you think she’ll be by the pool tomorrow?” Craig responded, gasping as he felt his adult partner’s huge, hard penis probe between his thighs and press forward, hot and wet along his belly.  
      “Unless there’s a direct strike by a big meteor,” the young adult replied, running his hands down over the torso of the panting boy and then stroking both of them with his right hand as Craig wriggled his bottom in welcome.  “Would you like to go off alone with her, or take a couple of partners with you?”
      “Both,” the boy answered promptly, and they returned their attention to the bedroom, completely naked.
      
      The tableau by the bed had changed slightly.  Mary now knelt in front of her brother, holding him with her left hand and stroking him heavily with her right while Doug braced the arching athlete from behind, allowing him to spread his legs widely for the gamine female in front of him.  Craig moved Andrew’s hand aside so he could emulate the girl, quickly taking up a firm rhythm with his handsome mentor while the young executive fondled his heaving chest and flanks.  “If you find a boy your own age,” the man whispered to the child, “you could take him up inside you while this was happening.”
      “I want you to rape me,” the eleven year old hissed in response.
      “No,” Andrew panted, “it has to be very slow and careful, with a boy, not a man.”
      “Then you join us,” the boy said, “because you can right after he sperms in me, can’t you?”
      “We can try,” the man replied, “but I don’t want to hurt you.”
      
      They fell to silence, entranced with the palpable rise in tension of the brother as his pretty, tomboy sister stroked him avidly, cooing and mewing, Doug’s strong arms around his heaving chest and taut belly.
      “You were right about the back-burner,” Craig whispered, “I could die tomorrow and know I hadn’t missed a single, solitary thing.”
      “That’s what it’s meant to be,” his friend grunted, “complete; not residual issues or half-fulfilled longings.  The way it was for umpty-ump hundreds of thousands of years before the church identified it as something to sell.”  Again silent, they were almost holding their breaths in sympathy with Paul’s hot straining when it happened.  He suddenly relaxed and whispered, “Oh, sis.”  Shortly after, the girl was covered with a torrent of incestuous seed, chirping with excitement and coaxing the stag not to stop.  He didn’t for the longest time, then finally the hard, fast spurting ebbed to a flow and he slowly collapsed over the slim, long legged beauty, rolling to the far side of the bed so Doug could find room.  Mary lay on her back, legs open, and Paul came to life just in time to guide his friend into his waiting sister.  Their connection was slow and careful, Mary giving a yip and grabbing her brother’s arm and the sharp sting of her parting hymen.  Doug froze for a long two minutes as the girl carefully wriggled beneath his powerful body, then, as she began thrusting tentatively to him, began meeting her with the movement of his athletic thighs.  
      
      “Oh, Paul,” the girl gasped, “Marcy is so lucky, he’s beautiful.”
      “And one of these days he’ll be inseminating you,” the brother said, falling back on ranch talk.
      “And our daughter,” the girl panted, her slim legs wrapping Doug’s waist as her arms encircled his back, and taking a refreshingly long view of things for a tyke her age.  In a few moments the girl relaxed slightly and her stag took her fully, pausing, straining, then beginning to stroked his athletic body against her immature frame.  Marcy’s left hand alternated between the heaving back on top of her and her handsome brother’s shoulder, gripping each in turn until her knuckles grew white as she thrust ever more vigorously against her mature, powerful lover.
      “I’m cumming, Marcy,” the half conscious boy finally groaned, then froze over the child, both quaking in unison as the girl mewed in welcome at the hot, rapid pulsing deep in her belly.  Mary’s hand went to Paul and their friend rolled free of the panting girl, dropping smoothly to the carpeted floor, his seed still spilling copiously even after what had obviously been a long series of full ejaculations between her thighs, now as slick with frothy white semen as her immature tummy and chest.  She found her new stud immediately and as Doug stared from a kneeling position on the floor, guided him until she yielded and he thrust fully to her in half a dozen careful strokes.  “Yes,” she whispered as his sweating loins pushed hard against hers, and the implication to fuck her was hot in her eyes, though, due to all the microphones everywhere, the actual word didn’t pass her lips (a class-distinguishing no-no at LoveLess, much more salient than anything to do with race or ethnic origins)
      
      No words were needed, and they quickly found each other, the spider-legged cutie and her Adonis, swimmer brother, found a hard, fast pulse of a rhythm that made the bed squeak aloud.  A minute then two.  Doug fondled both the sweating bodies, staring at the hot spectacle between them each time Paul pushed high on his arms to gaze down at the beauty welcoming him.  “God,” he murmured to his friend, “it feels so hot knowing what you felt inside her, and she’s so full of cum.”
      “I want it to,” Doug whispered back.  “To have Marcy fresh and sweating from you.”
      “Yes,” Mary moaned, “yes, she’s got to feel Paul, he’s heaven.”
      “Make her cum,” Doug hissed.  And it was if he’d pulled a lanyard.  Mary yelped and exploded against Paul, her mouth at his neck, her long legs beating, her tiny hands clawing the rigid back frozen hard over her.  With a whoosh of air, she fainted, falling flat on the bed, immediately regaining consciousness to lie wriggling and crying out as her orgasm slowly faded in unison with that of her quaking, athletic brother.
      
      Andrew and Craig watched for another half hour as the trio came slowly back to life, the males licking the female and each other clean and sharing their salty findings with the eager girl and her avid tongue and lips.  Slowly they subsided from even this level of activity and fell into a nap.
      
      “By the way,” Andrew whispered to his young friend, “the showers here don’t actually work; completely unnecessary with the pool.”
      “Good,” the boy said, catching on in an instant, “because I really need one.”
      
Photoplay – End File 5

xxx


