E. to T.

       Yours is awesome.  Love it.  Here’s what has really happened, so far.  First, I’m still at home, it’s one in the morning, but I can sleep in the car, tomorrow (or later today), so that’s not important.  Let’s go back to about nine o’clock in the evening, a little after Dad and I had read “Poet” and talked.  The only setting the stage seems to need is telling you that my thirteen year old brother’s name is Del, short for Delancy.
       
       “You busy?”
       “Ready to take a break, my eyes are bugging me, come on in, sis.”
       “It’s coming along well.”
       “Thanks.”
       “Can we talk about something serious?”
       “I guess so, unless you want to pound your joints to rubble by joining the monkey squad.”
       “Not about cheerleading.”
       “Okay.”
       “Dad and I just had a long talk, that’s why we missed reading, tonight.  There is going to be a major huge change in our lives – don’t worry, nothing to do with sickness or divorce or anything like that – but huger than huge, bigger than big, and…”
       “You did say survivable, or at least imply it, didn’t you?”
       “Physically, we should come through, okay, though there are issues, there, I suppose, but there’s a big psychological part, and that isn’t quite so pat.”
       “You’re so bejiggled by having three brothers, you want an operation so you can be a fourth.  H’mm.  I’m skeptical, but if it’s what you really want…”
       “Were that the case, the shoe would be quite on the other foot, the three of you serving as my beloved older sisters, you know, assuming it’s easier to cut than to sew.”
       “Glad we covered the subject fully.”
       “Del, it’s pretty serious.  I didn’t come to you for a veto, it’s going to happen, whatever you think and however you feel, but I did want to tell you, not have you find out in some other way.  If you’re against it, it will be doubly sad, compared to what it would be if you were for it, but unless I’m snake-bit, it’s going to happen.  Dad and me.  We’re going camping again.  Last time, something happened in the tent during the night that I didn’t understand, and it freaked me out.  That’s why I’ve been on the Net the last three evenings, and I was on it, again tonight, with Dad.  It’s a huge change, like I said, and I want you to be a part of it.  In fact, I want you to start it.  The two of us.  Here, in your room, now, I mean not this physical minute, but after we’ve talked.”
       “I think I better leave that up to you, Erica, at least until I have some idea of what this big change is, of what’s going through that pretty head of yours.”
       “For openers, how much I love you most of all, a whole nine-point-three percent more than Dad or Mack or Scott.”
       “I feel the same,.”
       “Second, that you’ll take it.  Accept it.  That even if it strains things between us, we’ll still have more than most brothers and sisters.”
       “Assuming said radical changes have nothing to do with weapons or poisons.”
       “The last time we went camping, Dad and I, I wanted to try zipping our two sleeping bags into one big one.  I woke up in the middle of the night and Dad’s penis was very hard and jutting high up between my legs.  He was sound asleep, so I learned later, and didn’t know what was happening.  He was pushing against me, from in back, and I was trying to push him away.  I could feel the head of his erection was wet and slippery, and when I tried pushing him back my right hand kept slipping off, so I tried with both hands.  I didn’t give up an let him do what he wanted, because I was really scared, then all of a sudden he became very still behind me, but I could feel he was tense and straining, then I began getting wet all over my lower chest and tummy.  After a minute or so, it stopped, and that was the end of it, except I lay there all wet not knowing exactly what had happened, though I guess I knew it had something to do with sex.
       “The next morning, I read part of a story on his laptop, something in a secret file.  That led to other things that have happened, culminating in our talk during reading time.
       “Are you with me, so far?”
       “Not enough to want to take the lead.”
       “We read together, sort of like we always do, but with significant changes in story theme.  We talked about what happened in the tent.  We’re going camping again, leaving tomorrow morning.  Your virgin sister is here in your room, with the door closed, telling you about it, the same sister who loves you almost ten percent more than she loves anyone else.”
       “Lead on.”
       “Do you want me to?  I’m as scared as I was on the Luna Trail.  Do you want me to stay here in your room with you for an hour or two after I get up and lock the door?”
       “You’re not a flake, a kook, or a moron.”
       “Thanks.”
       “Yes, you can stay.”
       “Thanks.”
       “What do you want to do?”
       “If it’s possible, I want to watch you do what Dad did while I was touching him, then, and I don’t know about the technical stuff as far as boys go, I want you to do the same thing Dad did, but up inside me.  I guess, technically, I want you to rape me twice if you can.”
       “To you want to be naked while the rapes are occurring, or just do it like kid’s stuff and save being naked for Dad?”
       “Would you have more sperm if you saw my chest first – I mean, isn’t that what ‘Playboy’ is all about?”
       “Yes.”
       “And you won’t be disappointed, you know, by me being different than the pictures in the magazine?”
       “Maybe it’s a sign of bad parenting or a misspent youth, not that I’ve spent that much of it, but I’ve always been one to make a distinction between, you know, anatomy and beach balls.”
       “It’s just that you’re so mature for thirteen; almost Dad’s size, so I thought you might prefer something a little more babe than a second edition of our petite mom.”
       “Since you’re being honest with me, I should return the favor, if that’s what it is.  Erica, I’m at least half way a pervert.  When we go to the beach or the pool, I look at the girls your age and down to maybe age eight or nine, once in awhile, even younger.  More mystery, I guess.  To be a bit crude, half an orange or grapefruit is going to look like half an orange or grapefruit, but a boy doesn’t know how a strawberry or cherry is going to turn out, so it’s more fascinating.  Something like that.”
       “I don’t think girls feel the same.  A little boy – you know, younger than Scott – wouldn’t make me feel what I feel around you, even though I don’t really know what I’m talking about.”
       
       “Males all kook about the same when they get older, females have more variety, maybe that has something to do with it.”
       “Aren’t some boys, you know, bigger than others?”
       “Not to the same degree girls are, you know, with some exceptions.”
       “How come you’re flushing?”
       “I’m not.  I’m just trying to be modest.”
       “I have a new Net friend, you’ll be meeting him before long, and he has ego problems, both acute and chronic, so he just confronts them by acknowledging them; saying, flat-out and in no uncertain terms he’s the best writer of all time, of our time, and of all time to come, without getting all flustered and embarrassed about it, and he makes the best he can of the situation by keeping it simple and honest, and using it to his advantage like a blind person uses his sense of hearing.  Love you though I surely do, I don’t think you’re likely to have a ‘size’ problem bigger than his.”
       “Well, okay, yeah, when we took showers for gym, yeah, I was kind of different than the other boys.”
       “Is that why you got invited on so many sleepovers last year?”
       “Is that weird to you?”
       “Only that there is so much good taste left in a crumbling society.”
       “Well, to tell at least part of the story, yes, it was pretty exciting the first few times, but now I’d rather stay home and work on my ship, except for Robbie and Stan.  Neither of them wants to have anything to do with being gay, so we don’t go falling in love or anything.”
       “And how do the three of you  keep from doing that, I’d like to know?”
       “Very carefully.”
       “I’m around you too much.  If I had to be that careful it would be more of a strain than loving you.”
       “What does your friend do, you know, besides crowing about how great he is?”
       “He writes novels and short stories about families that love each other as much as we do, about children who love adults as much as I love Dad, and how careful they are when it comes to expressing that love.  The dangers, the rewards; the limitations, the opportunities; the discipline and the privileges.  Stuff like that.”
       “Sounds better than Harry Potter.”
       “You just said a mouthful.”
       “Do you think it’s still happening inside you, you know, making more sperm for me?”
       “Yes.”
       “Can you feel it happening, I mean I don’t want to be gross or anything, like before you have to use the bathroom?”
       “Yes.”
       “Is it, you know, uncomfortable, the way the other thing is?”
       “It’s kind of like the clicking of the safety catch on a wooden rollercoaster, it would be irritating, listening to it for too long, but in the right amount, it’s anticipatory.”
       
       
       Ha, ha, this is turning out to be a cliff hanger.  Do you know how it’s going to turn out when you start a manuscript?  It seems to me there’s some kind of automatic thing that happens, half focused, half unpredictable.  Feels kind of eerie, in a way, like there’s someone else inside you that takes over.  Anyway, that gets us up to about ten o’clock last evening, and, as I said, it’s one a.m. now, so there’s more to come, but I’d better get some sleep for tomorrow.  What Del and his friends Robbie and Stan do, vis-à-vis falling in love with each other, well, I’m using the same technique on you.  Hope you don’t mind; also, that Elston and Tonton are getting enough to eat.
       
       
T. to E.


       
       The boys don’t get enough to eat.  I tried intervening, but there are six in Samantha’s family, and hundreds here like Elston and Tonton, so I charge them not rent and do a little something here and there, but mostly  try not dwelling on the cruelty of the Jew’s and mankind’s cruelest invention: crummy god, who besets billions so, and whom we apparently share, and look at the dynamic and active side in which quite a few people are doing pretty okay, some even well, and figuring, in spite of their suffering, they’re not the huge, lumbering oxen I see any time a group of modern kids shows up on television, and they have a better future than said bovine food banks  Samantha’s enough tricks and cartoons to fill the girlfriend bill, but I’m still flattered.  The other day she wanted me to “dress more.”  I had on my usual house shorts and shirt, so I didn’t know what she meant.  She was using “dress” in the military sense, shift, as in dress that file.  She wanted me to shift, so there’d be room for her on the bed, you know, along with the computer and stuff.  Since she’s underage we limit our appearances together in public.  This is because of “interferings”, or people who interfere 
       .
       
       I liked your ego squib.  Neat work.  It brings up the theme of repetition.  That’s crucial in writing, a handful of motifs that you use repeatedly, rather than going off on some tangent and trying to be bold and original on every page.  I know it sound conceited, but why don’t you practice on my ego.  The Lone Ranger has silver bullets in every episode, Superman, his cape, and you wouldn’t want “Law & Order” to change it’s opening gambit of variations on the discovery of the body, so, taking those as examples, keep up the good work. Think how often amnesia, an exceedingly rare actuality, is used in Soap plots, and how much more original a living, breathing god is, how much more useful, and, since non-believers are free to laugh to their heart’s content, you can lay it on with a trowel and give Thurber and Wodehouse a run for their money.
       
       Remember that writing for Nifty is a cop-out.  You don’t have to waste your time dreaming up conflicts and imbuing your hero with stalwart diligence so he can resolve them.  Instead, you simply resort to an episodic format, relying on the reader’s tawdry and salacious nature to carry him or her through your work.  If that isn’t a literary miracle, then such a thing doesn’t exist.  In addition, we live in an era when every story has been told so many times the chance of coming up with something truly novel is remote.  For example, if you want to theme a work on the low quality of our politicians, well, Al Gore pulls his cell-phone U-turn, and you’re skunked by reality, leaving only a joke that simply isn’t very funny.  If you wanted to do a Keystone Cops thing, you’ve got Jonbenet Ramsey, so there’s that concept down the tubes. with O.J. doing the same, at least for the time being, on anything related to a chronicle of crime and punishment.  Terrorist emergency?  That’s been reduced to three numbers.  The grace and dignity of high office?  Monica.  The pastoral joys of small town life?  You’ll need a broom, not a typewriter.  Sex?  Well, that’s more interesting; I mean how long will it be before attempts at mating can only take place in a pool, least the animals crush each other in the process.  If it’s a religious epic you want to try, again, you’re licked before you start by a doddering geezer of a pope whose only interest in his church is dying in power.  Space travel?  Every day of the week we hear a Navy throttle jockey telling us about a giant leap for mankind, so that’s been done to death.  Terrestrial adventure?   It’s possible the hundredth climber to freeze to death in his or her sleeping bag on Mt. Everest might catch the public interest, but that’s probably a little niche to be worth the effort, and, obviously, it would have to be ghost written.  A Hollywood saga?  Well, I don’t have enough talent or experience to lend a compelling note to a bunch of fat Jews facing universal age discrimination as they approach their thirties – the reality of their beloved socialism – but someone else might.  A Western?  “Lonesome Dove” is the only one we need.
       
       That’s quite a list of reasons not to try a novel, and, while completing the list would undoubtedly fill a book, it wouldn’t be fiction.  Nifty identifies itself as an alternative archive, but, truth to tell, and provable by every issue of “The New Your Review of Books”, it’s the only major publisher and repository of fiction left in the world.  Ain’t it neat?
       
       Your story begins with a nice use of language.  You make an all-dialogue narrative work; what a challenge for your – I assume – first serious attempt at writing for publication.  Congratulations for taking it on, and you don’t seem inclined to numb us out with c-words and f-words and p-words and equating the essences of passion with foodstuffs.   Pedophiles have a strong tendency to be Victorian prudes; either that, or they place what happens between an adult and willing child on an altar above a pedestal.  Wish this reality was more evident in Adult/Young-Friends stories.
       
       I find myself wondering, Erica, how long you might want to make this project.  For example, in my fantasy version of your first real time with your dad, I’m going to have you quiz him on his first time.  By the same token, you’re is a position to ask Del similar questions.  From there, either of us could go to your mom’s initial experiences, plus you have two brothers to go.  Personally, I like getting up each morning, if rolling over is “getting up,” in the middle of a long novel, knowing there will be five to twenty pages more before I roll the other way.  The world’s most prolific writer, an English chap who wrote some kind of illustrated serial in addition to other works – hard to see how he could have beaten Asimov – credits “want of a wife” for his output, and Samantha threatens on that front with ever visit.  Of course, I perfected my skill set way too late in life to ever challenge Scott, Dickens, Shakespeare, and probably a fairly small list of other.  It’s a bit of a boggle to think where you may end up, keeping up your present stunning rate of contribution, over, say, seventy more years.  My father’s acerbic response to my efforts of last year was to suggest a million-page novel.  The thing here is you never get tired of it.  You think you do, sometimes for several hours at a time, then the magic of the keyboard draws you back and there are five thousand more words.  Speaking of which, at seventeen thousand words, we’re over a quarter of the way to meeting the minimum count for a novel, after four days.  That’s actually very slow for me, but there has been much doing on the domestic front, and my sleep pattern has gotten knocked sideways and backwards repeatedly, so I’m a little off my game for that reason.  Ten thousand word days are quite a thrill, and, with your formal schooling out of the way, and a not only perfect but vivid domestic arrangement I’ll bet it’s not too long before you see what I mean.  I wrote my recalcitrant Concord acquaintance that a day of my life was more valuable than a year of most of my siblings or cousins.  He called it ranting, but nothing is as valuable as whet we do, because we’re the only ones who can do it.  Most people place a story or two on Nifty, good, bad, or indifferent, where I – and I hope we –  write in the neighborhood of a story a day, month in and month out.  Remember, as you go along, that the archive is a literary free-fire zone; you can say anything as long as you don’t use a certain ethnic k-word or call for outright extermination; names, places, dates, and events – so don’t be bashful.  Few intelligent writers, a small subset, by the way, in history have ever had the privilege of saying exactly what they wanted to say, so load the old blunderbuss with whatever comes to hand, aim it anywhere you choose, and fire when ready.
       
       Erica, is there any blood relationship between your mom and dad?  You seem to be running around with about a million horsepower under the hood.  The relationship of incest and genius are of some interest to me, having first cousins as grandparents (Emerson/Forbes).  I’m too lazy to have been at the head of the line when they were passing out brains, so that can’t be the explanation.  It’s probably a vague and tenuous connection, if any, but inquiring minds may want to know.  (The Nazis weren’t in power long enough to fully experiment, but I wonder if they tried.)  Also, since you have access to more technical material than I do, I wonder how accurate it is when I attribute physical development in both males and females to the copious and frequent intake of semen, orally, vaginally, or anally.   I once saw a porn film featuring males with organs to their knees, but maybe this is a natural fluke having nothing to do with sexual activity.  Hoping your brother and dad are perfectly endowed to leave you purring like a cream-fed cat, I’ll  take us back to that Florida hiking trail.
       
       
       “Is here okay,” Erica asked, “or do you want to wait until we’re in a more private place and have the tent set up?”
       “How do you feel, darling?” the handsome athlete replied.
       “Kinda wild, I guess,” the virago replied, “almost as if I wouldn’t mind if someone did happen along while it was happening.  I’ll bet a lot of men use a hiking trail like this as an enabler to raping their daughters or nieces.  The rangers have probably seen it all before and wouldn’t blow the whistle, and there’s probably at least even odds any other observer would be more entranced than offended.”
       “I agree,” the young man said, “but there would have to be a standard.  If a reasonably fit and attractive male came along, and lingered, I think it would be his right to join us; to take you.  How would you feel about that?”
       “I don’t think creeps hike very much,” the girl responded, “nor the diseased.”
       “Good point,” Ryan allowed.
       “What would be really interesting,” the girl added, “is if a couple who thought they were gay came along and saw what was happening between us.  Might be kind of traumatic for them.”
       “Well,” Ryan chuckled, “if they passed on by, they’d earn a place in the Homo Hall of Fame, and that’s a fact.”
       “I wonder if there will ever be one,” the girl mused.  “Gays have contributed so much more than athletes, they should have one.  It would be the Hall of Fame of Halls of Fame.”
       “Can’t get along without ‘em,” her dad nodded, and they continued sitting on their shaded outcropping, bathing in the rising tension of their healthy young bodies.
       “If you don’t get raped by a stranger on this trip,” Ryan murmured, “will you want Del to be your second full experience with a male?”
       “Yes,” Erica replied, and they lapsed back into their mutual reverie. 
       
       “Does it ever happen with a male,” the girl asked after a few minutes, “just from outside stimulation like thinking about something, seeing something, or talking about things; I mean without physical stimulation?”
       “I’m not sure,” Ryan replied.  “A boy ejaculating in his underwear without, say, a coach reaching in to see if his cup is the proper size, well, I think that may be urban legend.”
       “So it’s never happened with you?” the girl said.
       “No,” her dad replied.
       “Did you ever think it might?” she wanted to know.
       “The closest I cam was my first time,” the thirty two year old noted.
       “Can you tell me about it, or is it private?”
       “Wow,” Ryan mused, “yes.  Apropos of alternatives to physical foreplay.  It was what I just alluded to, you know, with a coach and a young athlete.  I was a year younger than you, eleven.  Coach Kitt asked Jimmy Lane and I to stay after practice one Friday afternoon.   The three of us were big John Irving fans, so that made us kind of a social circle and we’d gone out for dinner with him a few times, and been over to his apartment, too.  He was pretty frank about it, when the time came.  He told us he’d been molested by his gym teacher while he was trying out different athletic supporters, and he wanted to share the experience with us.”
       “Did it happen quickly, or like we’re being?” she wanted to know.
       “Lingeringly,” Ryan replied, “I guess an hour and a half in the locker room, then we both spent the night at his apartment.  Psychologically, it was especially cool because we could each vouch that nothing reprehensible had happened, so it was actually more private than if he’d had us, individually.”
       “Sounds perfect,” the girl whispered.
       “It was – maybe even better – for both of us,” Ryan responded, “and it was probably pretty remarkable no one twigged the scene, because we used to catch each other’s eye, you know, like in the library or in class, and grin and blush like lovers, even though we were just friends and had shared what was, at least after it was over, a largely physical experience, though, again, we certainly liked each other and were very glad to be together.”
       
       “That’s so neat,” the girl observed, “because it fits me.  I feel about you the way you and Jimmy felt; that what happens when we’re naked with each other will be something to smile and flush at from time to time, but not being in love.  Just by a little bit more, I’m in love with Del.”
       “Would you prefer him as the father of your child?” Ryan whispered.
       “Not necessarily,” the girl mused, “I mean not to the extent of being alone with him during my fertile periods, but if the girl is his, I’d think it was just a tad extra neat-o, something like that.  But I think what you said about pheromones is true, because something tells me I won’t really be in love with a male unless he’s an outsider, sort of like that girl who wanted to have a baby with Stewart in those old Ameritrade ads; you remember, the second one they made where he says ‘I wouldn’t min living here’ to the rich girl’s father.  That made me get goose bumps, just a rambling, wild kind of guy who takes me when he feels like it and just grunts from the time he gets my bra off.  I wouldn’t want to be married to him for an hour, just have his baby.”
       
       And at that moment there were footsteps on the trail.  An individual, seemingly making good time, five miles in the heat, no sweat.  He hove into sight a minute later, a rangy, hawk faced older teen of Mexican/indo background, kind and fiery eyes, a rugged complexion with perhaps some acne scarring combined with an outdoor life.  Ryan and Erica didn’t look at each other, because they didn’t have to.  The girl tensed palpably and her father spoke.
       
       “Not many rocks in Florida,” he said, “take a five here, if you like.”
       “Cool,” said the hiker, introducing himself as Armando de Lira.  They exchanged pleasantries while Armando busied himself rolling a large joint.  Ryan responded by rummaging a quart of burgundy from his backpack, and the mode to go anywhere vanished.
       
       “Have you hiked Luna Trail much?” Erica asked the boy.
       “Quite a bit.  Maybe three times a month for the last couple of years,” the handsome youth responded.
       “Cool,” the girl said.  “Dad an I were having a mature conversation when you came along, and, you know, if it wouldn’t be embarrassing to you, well, maybe we could ask you some questions.
       “The reason is,” she continued, “that we’re out here for, you know, a very special reason, a very special day in a girl’s life and we both really like talking about things, and so maybe you do to and could stay with us as our friend for awhile.”
       
       Well, they don’t make ‘em much more articulate than that.  What had already vanished was now on the verge of disappearing for a long, long time.
       
       “I guess I can kind of answer you by saying that yes, I hike here because it’s beautiful and I’m into birds, but twice things like I think you mean happened.  Mature things.  I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but one relationship was with a father and daughter about your ages, and the other was with Tony Gills, a twelve year old boy whose dad left us together for two days while he went back to the city for a business emergency.”
       “Are you suspicious about other things you see?” the child asked.
       “Yes,” Armando said, “I think there’s quite a bit of activity here.  Incest.  It’s actually not uncommon to see younger girls limping slightly as they walk with adult men.  I know it’s anecdotal, but they look and act, otherwise,  the same as the other kids, in fact, if anything, they seem to stay closer to their male partner, in most cases, I assume, their fathers, than kids who are out here on their first day and walk normally.”
       “Have you ever, you know, like spied on people?” Erica asked next.
       “Part of the reason I use Luna Trail is that I’m writing a paper on a certain lizard that’s out here; don’t worry, nothing to do with the hysteria of endangerment, more artistic in scope, with a lot of video.  Well, that means I skulk around in the bushes a certain amount, and, yes, I’ve been in the right place at the right time to see things, like the relationships with Al and Tracy and Tony, twice.  I tell myself I don’t come for that reason, being an indoctrinated Catholic, but I won’t say it isn’t the nudge for an extra trip now and then.”
       
       “Daddy,” Erica said, “since we’re all talking about mature things, could we masturbate together while you tell us about being with Jimmy and your coach and Armando tells us about what he saw while he was photographing lizards?” 
       
       
       Can you guess the answer?  That’s my segment for this go-round.   I find myself wondering where you’ll download this and if you’re sharing it with you dad as you read.  In closing, let my say that by now there are, in southern Florida, at this moment, very likely some billion or more very happy sperms.
       
E. to T.


       You’re freaking clairvoyant!  Okay, an adult male produces, according to the books, about two hundred million, you know, at a time.  But that’s average.  Del and Dad are both way above average, but it didn’t happen the first time inside me with my brother, so you have to allow for that, but it did, with Dad, so that compensates.  Also, there’s be, at least theoretically, lesser numbers on subsequent events, so that would tend to bring them back to what the book thinks of as average.  In the end, a billion.
       
       Guess where I’m writing from.  A rare rock in Florida.  But back to Del.
       
       
       “There should be a stronger word than ‘anticipatory’.  That sounds defensive, not like a cauldron that’s bubbling up and bubbling up.”
       “I don’t think there is one.  William F. Buckley would know.  He’s got a real writer’s vocabulary.  Anxiety, but positive .  I man, high anxiety, and very positive.  Anticipation.  That’s for a birthday cake or a nap.  A roller coaster ride.  This is more like sitting on a tack and wanting to get off, only obviously the exact opposite.  Intense.  All-consuming.  I couldn’t think of anything but how your breasts will look if the house was on fire.  And that’s just seeing you.”
       “Plus, it will more dramatic for me to see you, so you’ve got to think of that.  How I’m going to feel.  I mean my nipples are I suppose like cherries on top of half-scoops of ice cream, and something tells me that isn’t a whole lot, you know, speaking from the physical standpoint, compared to your being a boy.”
       “But you get the last laugh in the physical display category, don’t forget, because one of these days you’ll be pregnant, and we’ll be pygmies.”
       “And mom, too, so you’ll have to be on guard against complexes.”
       “The sooner the better.”
       “Does that mean we can take our clothes off?”
       
       “If you’ll skip down the hall and get a washcloth from the bathroom.  I don’t know how well I’ll be able to control myself when I see you in your bra, and there might be, you know, kinda an accident.”
       “Do you want me to take off my blouse and short while I’m in there?”
       “Okay.  I’ll take off my shirt and pants.  It will be a good way to remind ourselves that we’re brother and sister experimenting and maybe making a baby, not a romantic couple.”
       “I like keeping them separate, too.  Probably five percent of that nine-point-three percent why I love you the most, because you know what it will be and will not be.  Chemical and physical, not emotional and psychological, at least not too much.”
       “And it should be that way with Dad, maybe even a little more.  You want to find someone you want to kiss all day long, and I don’t think we should even experiment with kissing.”
       “When you guys get me pregnant, I’m going to kiss all of you, but, meantime, we’re on the same page.”
       “And we wouldn’t be there long if we started kissing and touching each other like boyfriend and girlfriend.”
       “I’ll go get the cloth from the bathroom and take off my clothes.”
       “Remember, I’m NOT your boyfriend.  That’s a time-in-the-bathroom point.”
       “Well, it’s just a science-in-life experiment, why would I primp and linger?”
       “Because you’re an academic minx and you want the end to be as exciting as the end of a long novel, at whatever cost to the male involved, you know, the one who’s not complaining,  just dealing a card or two, face up.”
       “Okay, I’ll be quick.”
       “Do you want to stand close to me.  Between my legs while I sit on the bed?”
       “Is that a good way to masturbate?”
       “I do it with Robbie and Stan that way, sometimes.”
       “That’s definitely the best answer you could have given.  I can’t think whether it would be hotter or cuter, you know, mach cute, to watch you guys jerk off and get each other wet, you know, once a month or so.”
       “Sometimes we do it with a naked man, well, he’s Stan’s uncle, nineteen, with us.  It makes us more shy than when we’re alone together, but we don’t mind.”
       “Do you  touch them like you’re touching me?”
       “I think everything’s about identical, you know, what a boy and a girl do together and a boy does with another boy, except one obvious part.  But they’re completely bare chested when we get this far, so it’s more exciting with you.”
       “I hope you like the way I’m growing.”
       “You’re, you know, really high up on your chest.  That’s awesome.  More important than being big, but being like mom, I guess ‘high and pert’ describes it.”
       
       “Have you seen mom?”
       “No.  I’d faint.  Talk about taboo; it makes this look like something we could do for show-and-tell.
       “She’d feel the same as I do if you were touching her.  Do you think she’d feel the same to your fingers as my body does?”
       “Yes.”
       “But you wouldn’t want to kiss her, right?”
       “Weird, eh?  That’s a whole different thing.  Lots of hookers won’t kiss their Johns for any amount of money, which isn’t the sleekest of analogies, but it kind of says it all, in that department, anyway.”
       “I think it’s cool.  Even after you’ve raped me the second time and I could be pregnant from you, there’s still going to be a sort of big virgin side to me.”
       “Me, too.”
       “You don’t kiss Stan or Robbie?”
       “No.”
       “Now, I would like trying it with them.  I’m not against it, but not in the family, and not with my Johns if I’m mentally and physical waylaid by deviant family males.”
       “I think when you start showing we’ll want to kiss you on the forehead and shoulders and, for sure, on your tummy.  That would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
       “Do you want to try it before you’ve fertilized me?”
       “Yes.”
       “Okay.”
       “Would you like it if you were out in the woods with us and all three of us were doing it with you?”
       “As long as you didn’t stop.”
       “If my hands go up too high on your chest, push my head back a little and I’ll know.”
       “What if I do this?”
       “It makes me feel you’re ready for it to happen.  That you’re going to like growing up with six males feeling about you the way I do, and if you want to bring a seventh, instead of picking Robbie or Stan, that would be okay, too.  It makes me feel like you’ll want this to happen again and again.  That it will become a natural part of all our lives.  That yes, we’ll throw off only one shackle of convention, one chain of morality, but we’ll throw it all the way off, go completely without it in our small group, taking advantage of your beauty, the real kind, not Barbie the J.A.P. with her frosting looks and plastic soul, and beside your tomboy beauty, and I think this is going to count a lot, your athletic ability.  Your ability to stand up, at least spiritually speaking, to being raped repeatedly, sometimes for hours on end, male after male, urging us on as you are urging me, livid for the life we bring to you, feral on one side, yet, at the same time, realizing there is a romantic side to a family baby and that it’s more than just an object that comes along as a result of carelessness or because there’s a book on how to raise it.  It makes me feel by thirteen or fourteen you’re going to be the happiest girl running around loose, everybody willing to help you with everything, even mom with feeding if it happens for both of you, and that after it happens, and we’re used to it, you’ll still have your whole life ahead of you as if it never happened, that you can fly off and join the circus, marry an acrobat, and never look back, if that’s what you want, or do anything except have another baby, because one’s the limit, unless you have twin daughters, that’s the exception.  I feel if you bring a strange adult male among us I’ll like to watch how he takes you, just once in awhile, and that he’ll come on in the woods with Stan and Robbie once in awhile, that, otherwise, what happens behind locked doors.  Dad, Mack, and Scott.  That I’d like Stan and Robbie on each side of me, their hands sharing your belly with me, and leading me higher for my first incestuous touch of your breasts.  I feel that would make a perfect ninety-eight-percent group, because just like I like looking at younger girls in bikinis, I want to watch some males with you.  Listen to them.  Touch both of your bodies.  And I want you to be alone with others.  Watch you and Mack go for a walk, and know what happens when you’re alone is none of my business.  If there’s more, I can’t think of it at the moment.”
       
       “I think you think fantastically.  It’s like I’m pulling men against me, and wanting them to roam, but not mankind; that I’ve been turned into a perfect pasture and wouldn’t notice greener grass do to the distractions of seven stallions, six I grew up with, and one wild mustang from over yonder horizon.”
       “How about your Internet friend?”
       “That’s all intellectual.  My guess is he’d say we probably wouldn’t even like each other all that well if we met; you know, personalities and stuff like that getting in the way.  I mean it, Del; mom and I for six or seven males.  A few – Stan, Robbie, and a stranger to be named later –  that can be wild together, the other four, intimate and private; two adults and five beautiful boys.  I mean, isn’t that it, at least through the high school years?  More than?  And isn’t that being true to nature?  True to life in the fullest sense?  To breed and to read?  To restrict the former, as it is base and feral for all the numbing joy it brings, and unleash the latter, limit it less?  Can there be anything less if we are to attempt the absolute, attempt, fleeting though the realization may be, perfection and come to define utopia as something behind us?  Your hands tell me so.  Tell me the path is not just right, but, again, perfect; not a maze but a road passing a circular track.  My males are on the track, around and around again and again because there wouldn’t be much difference with others, and the books are not exactly a straight line, but if one has to choose between having too much on the track and having too much on the road, I think even physics probably plays a role, or at least biological physics.  Round and round for the body, down the lane and over the mountain for the mind, that’s a simpler way of saying the same thing, and, if you touch me any higher up, well, Del, I may have to start thinking up even simpler things to say.”
       
       “Do you think this is more going all the way than it would be with a bookless bimbo on the monkey squad?  That hearing her pant oh, baby, would be more erotic than listening to you talk about tracks and roads?  Do you think being molested by males who love listening to you, and have something they can at least try to say, in their turn, might end up being more a road than a track?  I mean, sure, it would be more hearts and flowers than the rugged path toward the intellectual peaks, but it would also be more physically and emotionally exciting, so there’s that to consider.”
       “That’s why I want seven of you, and seven thousand books by the time I croak, not the other way around, just because of that, too much emotion, too much excitement, and remember, that’s just for the next few years.  It’s a pasture, not a walled-off box canyon; we’re lovers, not prisoners, and the sweeter the sweet talk on the track, because hearts and flowers are way cool, it will be more of the same I want to hear, as my Net friend says, the more repetition I’ll want, I think we’ll want, and repetition over the new chapter and novel verse – aren’t they called ‘lines’ by boys?  This is arbitrary.  Just my benchmark.  When I’m old enough I want to write “My Book About Growing Up”, and I want it to be specific.  These I read, by these I was raped.  Does that make sense?”
       “Since I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to read it, probably more like dollars.”
       
       “With you as stallion of the first part, I think you’re right about the readership, but the money’s nix.  That’s my Net buddy talking.  He writes for free and I will, too.  Hey, I’m young enough to make a mistake like that.  In fact, we’ve already collaborated to the extent of thirty or forty pages.  He has the lead now, because he’s fifty-seven and had more experience, but my share will becoming, and as soon as there’s a scene for the publisher, the first part will be posted and downloaded at the rate of a thousand copies a week, more at first, year after year.”
       “And what kind of scenes does the publisher want?”
       “Very graphic.  Full detail.  Pay in that coin and we, Tom and I, can trip the light fantastic far and wide; play in the clouds, lasso the lightning, write whatever we freakin’ eh please – no one paying, no one writing, maybe, after awhile, no one reading.  Del, writing isn’t something you do, a writer is something you are.  The doing, or ignoring, is up to the reader.  He writes as a king.  Obey or die, leaving it up to us to fatten and degrade ourselves until, lo and behold, we do die.  He tells us to be miserable, but that’s kind of disingenuous, because he knows we already are.  (I think maybe he just wants us to be sure.)  If he’s right, and this is my interpretation, then only by having our noses rubbed in absolute misery will we decide we’ve had enough of that shit and begin to obey.  By then it will be too late, it probably is at this moment, so, meanwhile, there’s a way to fully utilize our remaining time, you know, just in case there is any kind of spiritual afterlife, we’ll take the maximum with us, and, if there isn’t, well, that’s pretty sophomoric.”
       “But isn’t that, of itself, perhaps a new foundation?  What our group will have?  Wouldn’t it work for others?  Two or three males per female, both sides of the coin, private and wild, not as a lifestyle but in aid of developing a life free of style?  A real life, not a formed, shaped, and molded imitation?  What could equal it?  Certainly not all the reading in the world.  Certainly not all the physical activity in the world.  Definitely not cheer leading.”
       “Del, Del, he’s my man, if he can’t do it, no one can.”
       
       “Sounds nice when you whisper it like that.  Never thought I’d hear the day.  So far beyond sports,  Howard Cosell’s gift to an illiterate nation.  More like the stars, like we got stashed in a relatively bleak and drab sector of the universe, at least according to the Hubble people,  because our astronomical sensations are our pretty young girls, especially if they’re our kid sisters.  That probably doesn’t fit in with the philosophical greats who, at least it seems to me, have a regrettable tendency to practice excess diligence in obscuring the ephemeral and rendering man unimaginable to himself, but, with a sister like you, it doesn’t have to fit anything any more than a key fits a horse or anything new necessarily fits anything old.”
       “Do you think, in Emerson’s time, when boys farmed with copies of Cicero braced on the right handle of the plow, that brothers and sisters ever came fully together under the auspices of philosophy?  In order, even in their youthful ignorance, to really try establishing folk alternatives for the greater good?  Almost scientifically, first, perhaps, to see if there was anything inherently wrong about the act, then, finding it felt natural as all get out, on a higher plain, whispering to special friends at school, finding sympathetic and sensitive adults, and finally establishing at least a local group, not a sex club, not a philosophical salon, not a reading circle, not a history seminar, but some vague and variable combination of all four.  Do you think that ever happened?”
       
       “Ralph Waldo Emerson, since you mentioned him, was great friends with Louisa May Alcott and her young sisters, preteen, I believe.  I’ll bet a dollar to a donut that nothing in his journals assures us that nothing ever happened.  Also, the children of Concord used to visit Thoreau out at his cabin on Walden Pond.  Does he assure us?  What if it did?  What if there’s a stash of letters in some hoary attic telling all.  Saying that, yes, their abiding and continuing friendships had an openly carnal side?  Would that even rock the boat?  If publicized, would it attract or deflect additional aficionados or even disciples of the Concord years?  Brook Farm, the Mormons, cults, communes and communities built on a hundred ideologies, but invariably including children at least part of the time.  In other words, how big a secret is it?  If it’s a big one, if it gets bigger, will more be built?  Could we eighty-six the malls and big boxes, restore our downtowns, by having a girl like you or a boy like me spend a little time in a back room with every twentieth customer?  I mean, that’s too practical an example, but you get what I mean: a fundamental shift of the magnitude our own family is shifting.  An ancient paradigm, for I’m sure it is, revived because it is true, because it works, and because it’s the way – you and mom with your seven males – things should have been all along.”
       
       “A perfection then would have so grossly stifled and overpopulated the planet we wouldn’t be here, but now, under socialism and in the absence of monarchy, we’re regressing, and pretty fast, too, so even if it doesn’t work very well it won’t make much difference.  We can’t mourn for the past as it is, because we wouldn’t be here without its wars and slaughters, and we can’t change the world with the revival, because most people are too fat and unattractive to have anyone want to play with them, whatever morality is in vogue, but we can enrich ourselves either in the name of what-the-hell, or on the chance there is some paranormal aspect to death and transcendence of feelings and experiences if not the very soul.”
       “But neither if we don’t, you know, kinda get started.”
       “Look in my eyes when you touch me on the right side, and look at my nipples when you pull it away and start touching me on the left side, okay?”
       “Hi.”
       “Hi.”
       “I keep expecting you to push me away.”
       “Take it all the way off, then let’s take everything off, okay?”
       “Yes.  I better stand up.”
       “I’ll turn around so next time you’ll know how the snap works.”
       “Thanks.”
       “Can I pull your down before you pull mine down.”
       “Sure.”
       “You’re like a twin.  Beautiful, you know, overall, and just as beautiful, well, you know what I mean…”
       “By the same measure, you’re like triplets, and when I get your panties off, there may be more to the brood.”
       “Do you want to stand in front of me the way I was standing in front of you?”
       “Sure.”
       “Do you spread your legs like that for Stan and Robbie?”
       “I think using the muscles makes it more intense.”
       “And this is how they do it, with the left hand down low on you and the right hand moving?  When you start raping, should I hold you still?”
       “That’s how Robbie likes to do it,  but Stan keeps his right hand moving, then he gets it wet and uses it a lot on the top.”
       “Have you got the biggest penis?”
       “Not by much.  We get more excited by, you know, how much sperm there is more than what the ruler says.”
       
       “Have you measured each other?”
       “Yeah, we like to fool around sometimes.”
       “And…?.”
       “I forget.  Maybe more than six but I don’t think seven.  That’s just kid’s stuff.  About as important as whether you have seven or eight freckles.”
       “Well, I think it’s artistic.  Aesthetic.  You’re manly, obviously perfect for a purpose, without being gross or obscene about it.  Like you’re built to make babies, not give a babe the heebie-jeebies.”
       “That’s how I feel about your breasts, Erica, big enough to serve, but not outlandish; like Mom’s, like a girl’s.”
       “Would it last longer if we could think of something to talk about, I mean whisper?”
       “The other guys like to talk about you, but that’s for the opposite reason, you know, if we don’t have much time.  When it’s time, they make me call them by your name and pretend they’re you.”
       “And that works?”
       “Yeah, it works super.  Anytime your name comes up, well, we are boys, after all.”
       
       
       You can see where this is going.  Lois Lane tied up in the abandon mine.  Tonto with a rope around his neck.  The coyote with an anvil.  Even there had been a surprise ending I wouldn’t dare use it.  Kind of funny when you think about it, because your archives publishes alternative material, but I hardly think they’d look kindly on an alternative ending.  Meantime, our readers will be glad to know there is an ending because we kind of got carried away on the existential and metaphysical side there for awhile.
       
       Sometime when my eyes are sort of half focused on a water spot or ragged surface in our old, used house, a pattern will suddenly pop out that’s beyond what any artist has ever put on canvas or carved from clay.  That’s how I feel about what’s happening.  They had something freaky on “MSN” the other day, about wanna-be amputees, apparently even going to the extreme of having surgery they don’t need.  I didn’t exactly laugh about it – growing up that subliterate can-t be very funny – but I felt derisive.  While I was writing this, guess what, yes, a couple did come along.  Sheila’s only eight, but she’s gamin and athletic and obviously mad about Karl, her dad, who, just by chance, Dad knows a little from NASCAR.  Anyway, to get back to the medical thing, I was walking a little stiffly to begin with and now I find myself hoping when I wake up tomorrow, I won’t be able to stand, much less walk at all.  And not just so I can spend all day in bed, typing, like you do – ha, ha – more feminine reasons like being used, for once in my delicate life; just used, used, and used again; primal, sweating, almost screaming and god, so utter and complete at the end.  Orgasms and babies all dizzy together, you wouldn’t think a girl could feel anything soft and delicate under such circumstances, but twice I could, even with all the panting and sweating I could feel it.  I can’t compare it to anything I can think of, offhand; maybe a filly’s first notion of her bucking foal, or something weird like a spelunker having a seizure while crawling through a small pipe line.  It was too slow, you know, the rhythm of what was happening, to be any kind of heartbeat, and at the same time, too deliberate to be anything accidental or casual.  Sheila’s been full of questions as we hiked along and it’s easier to explain it to her than it is to try putting it on paper, because I can squeeze her arm to mimic what the female feels if the male is motionless.  
       
       I hope knowing a little of what really happened doesn’t interfere with your Armando story.  I think I’ve done the dialogue-only thing enough, don’t you?  Makes me see why all novels are written to a more or less standard balance of talking and exposition..  On the other hand, that leaves me with having to describe myself, and I’m nobody’s raving beauty like Sheila is, even at eight, bless her.
       
       Almost twenty seven thousand words.  That’s so amazing for not even five days.  Little Miss Fauntleroy, one week an okay schoolgirl, even without the school, and now look, a limping tomboy just setting up camp with a tiny angel watching me type – saying Hi – and a pair of Greek gods coping with  the tent, singular, and firewood, which, even if it is acting out tradition and entirely unneeded, is pretty cute.
       
       Tomorrow?  Going nowhere.  Not on your life.  We picked up three extra batteries for the laptop, heavy darn things, and that should give you a hint as to my plans for the day.  See you thin.
       
       
T. to E.


       Zero mail on “Poet”.  May I suggest taking all the pleasure you can in your research and being content with it?  Nothing else is likely to come from your efforts and gauging from the level of contemporary indifference I’m sure glad I put the last thirty years into living my stories, not writing them.  It’s very much like the bookstore I ran in Iowa.  I had five used encyclopedias and never sold one, even for twenty-five bucks.  People think they can fill their lives at Wal-Mart, look around in disgust at each other, and keep on shopping.  They think cable can nourish them, look at each other in disgust, and keep watching.  That’s it.  Hemingway did the rest, and to the extent that you can type the names of famous novels into “Encarta” and all you’ll get in response is references to motion pictures or the author.  It wouldn’t surprise me if no novel is listed for its own sake, whereas hundreds of flicks are.  It is a colossally stupid world, bone headed, ignorant, and brutish.  You are extremely lucky to have what you do, as I am.  Expect nothing from anyone, and they’ll manage to contribute less.  Ironic, isn’t it, that we’re supplying these self-same sad sacks with the greatest thrill they’ve ever had in their entire comic book lives.  Have contempt.  Remain detached.  Be perverse.  No one’s worth not doing so, and, in total paradox, this opens the ultimate gate for the artist, you know, like being on a deserted island where you can say anything you like, because what to the seagulls care?  (They’re only interested in your eyeballs.)  You will be read, hugely, as time goes on, you will entertain, magnificently, as time goes on, and to some degree you’ll live your life so you CAN write about it, which has brought me a thrill and chill or two over the years.  For example, Samantha is probably the most famous non-performer of her age in the world, but, even though we’re technically celibate, I risk jail every time she’s alone in the house with me.  But she happened in the natural course of things, unexpectedly and spontaneously, though, indirectly, our relationship is an offshoot of living in the tropics, such a common denominator to literature it actually is something you can do for your career’s sake.  This brings up another example, or three of them as it happens.  Dangriga’s had three hairbreadth escapes from hurricanes in the past five years, including Mitch, the deadliest storm ever.  I don’t believe I’ve mentioned Mitch, Iris, or Keith in a million published words.  You’ve got the resources behind you, both human and monetary, to risk anything that doesn’t kill, badly injure, or sicken you, but do not risk it for writing.  Too bad it isn’t that simple.  I’m going to ride a camel and write a book.  A writer would dismiss such an act as no venture for a white man, and put it on his or her Z-list. 
       
       Thinking about you tomorrow – three batteries, great – I guess I can say welcome to a fantasy world.  To write well, to not just chronicle a series of events, but bring them to life, is more than just some kind of magic.  A large number of truly educated and experienced men and women, with some small number of children included feel, as I do, that the ONLY manifestation of spirituality, except selling it for its own sake, is the creative spark in the human soul.  Faith is backed by nothing, and less every year, it is the product of the huckster, both sincere (stupid) and avaricious (smart), and you can have a mountain of it, but that won’t help with the moles attacking your yard.  Transcendentalism is full of loopholes, too, I mean think of how many people have no creativity or talent, thus nothing of god, but at least the evidence is plentiful and can be seen in every beautiful garden, building, park, statue, painting, and, above all, book, the latter supreme because it takes the highest level of talent or genius.  Of course, I speak as a writer, but Catholics certainly bend reality to suit the coffers of the church, so I guess I’m allowed my little distortion, assuming I haven’t got it quite right.  You’re obviously thrilling to membership in the club; hey, I’m old enough to be your gramps, and I still do.  Welcome, again.  And not only that, you know, the talent and desire factors, you have a vivid story to tell, a theory, a theme, that a family and a small group of special friends should form a conclave that includes, but is not limited to, a high level of sexual activity.  While it parallels much of what I’ve said over the past two and a half years, it’s more specific; more something others could adapt to their lives, could include, more a tentative listing of privileges and opportunities mixed with obligations and disciplines that would work, at the very least, for some millions of fit, attractive families; more, enough of a stimulus, perhaps, to motivate some families to get their acts to together so they are attractive to each other and soon want to form an alpha group.  Free-spirit group would be another name.  In detail – where both god and the devil live – the program is yours, so you name it if you think it should have a name.  How ‘bout “The Erica Way”?
       
       Skeptics, and there are bound to be a few, will fairly quickly mention the fact that there isn’t much that’s romantic about a baby after you bring it through the door.  Wet at both ends and noisy to boot.  You’ve spent time in Mexico.  Good.  Then I don’t have to tell you how campisono women dote on their infants, with older siblings doting on the toddlers.  Close to the opposite of the neurotic antagonism and endless, noisy rivalry common, if not universal, in our society.  Paradox though it may be, the best answer to a child having a soft, Mexican ride through his or her early years might well be having the family bond doubled up.  A family baby.  “Different than the rest,” as the line from the old song, “Love Child”, goes, you bet, more loved, more nurtured, and more of a person, as a result, especially if it’s a girl, as you so wisely want, and she can begin being raped by her males at the age of three or four. 
       
       Perhaps outrages should be scaled.  (It’s an exercise to put your feet in conventional shoes from time to time).  The outrage of your deviant behavior, as outlined, to begin with, as, say, a ninety-five percent factor.  In other words, ninety five days out of a hundred, yes, it’s your race track, round and round, very repetitious – aren’t you glad it’s sex? – but the other five days, hours, however you want to measure it, the door is open to other outrages.  Two vectors come to mind.  First, the inclusion of a few carefully selected others to be partially included in your alpha group, very much on the proviso, though it doesn’t have to be arbitrary, that they form a group of their own.  Second, that from time to time you group attend a free-spirit nudist camp or resort.  Take a cruise on a special ship.  Searching out such a facility, one that has strict medical and social standards will be a thrill, itself, and you don’t have to read too much on Nifty to know that such clubs, if you will, exist.  Happy and responsible rather than wild and wooly.  Yes the objective is to be wild; to have your dad hold you while you are raped by several mature males in succession; to watch your dad tensing over the clinging body of a pretty little nymph, knowing what she’s feeling as he pulses high between her childish legs.  Going off alone with a handsome adult, holding hands as you walk toward his room, you dad watching, knowing what’s about to happen, and you knowing how he’s going to be with your when you return, your upper thighs slicked with being a female.  If you can’t locate such a free-spirit organization, or until you do, your dad can take you and your brothers to any active motel or hotel.  Watch the couples and groups in the pool.  See if any are displaying  Child molesters have subtle ways of communicating their preferences so my guess is it won’t be too long before you’re inviting friends up to your room.  As with dozens of issues, major and minor, it’s quantity and frequency that are the bugaboos.  Reading, taken to much of an extreme, can be dehabilitating.  Everything from food to the rarest of obsessive compulsions can run your trolley off its track.  Whether maintaining an open but disciplined sexual creed will help in other areas, I don’t know; but one would tend to think so, just as muscles that can life weights can lift groceries (however rarely this happens).  
       
       Big adventure, obviously off to an incredible start.  Will, six months from now, when you’ve been fully raped hundreds of time, you crave yet more?  Start hitchhiking and hanging out in arcades?  This goes back to my first letter to you.  To being a writer.  You simply lay out the ideas as fully formed as you can execute them; all entailing actions are those of the reader.  Jews write about their everlasting holocaust, blatantly using it as a defense against any criticism, whatever, but it is the millions of readers who, to compensate, act in concert to allow them utter domination of the media.  They write of socialism, but it is we who have become socialists to the extent our auto manufacturers spend more on pensions than on steel.  It’s the world’s most expensive dogma, but allows endless credit, so, again, we mortgage ourselves for its wonders.
       
       Since you are very likely to have a short life it is doubly appropriate you have a happy one, and you’re off to a great start there because there’s no substitute for contributing, and you’ve probably already shined in that department.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with Kazaa.  It’s pretty much unusable, thanks to the billions we’ve spent on astronuts, here in Central America, due to crippled bandwidth, but it may be viable in Florida.  It’s a file-sharing site, sort of gorilla grandson of Napster, and you can share videos.  As a specific suggestion, why don’t you make a motion picture chronicle of your group.  Take it as it comes.  For example, if Sheila cries and tries to beat her father off, publish it; if she lies inert until he finishes his business on top of her, show that, and if she clings to him, arms and legs, mewing for his hot sperm, and falls back, wriggling wantonly, her head lolling, her eyes glazed as Karl or your dad ejaculates insider her, that’s what you share.  Like Nifty, it’s a totally alien world; no one’s going to admit looking, so you can show faces, and, for all I know, post your name and address along with the video.  You can also swap photos, but videos obviously provide the background ambience – it’s pretty hard to tell if a kid’s giggling or crying in a still shot – that lets the viewer know, in most cases, if not all, that these are happy kids, as young as five, male and female, being fully raped by adult males.  Kazaa is a mallet against Victorian ice.  Swing it.  But let it also give you perspective.  Although it’s too pricy for me to use much, I keep an eye on their user count.  I’ve been on it for six months or so, and, if anything, the number online at a given moment, from three and a half to four and a half million, appears to be going down.  And remember, even a five million, which I’ve never seen, you’re talking not two percent of the American population.  If most users logged on and logged off, this actually would be a pretty impressive slice-of-time statistic, but it’s confused with so many people paying by the month and leaving their computers on at all times.  Twenty-four-seven, as they say.  How many of these are logged on to K.?  Impossible to determine, certainly a large number, but, in the end, not so large.  All this to remind you that you are out there in a no-man’s-land..
       
       One factor in your favor comes from an odd, by highly relevant source, a car ad run some years ago.  One party in the commercial thinks the other is talking about swapping wives, when the man actually wants to swap cars for a test drive.  “The kids?” is one line.  Another unexpected dose of film addressing the issue is the classic film “Auntie Mame”.   The very handsome boy, eight or nine, goes to a modern school where the teacher gets naked with the students.  As I remember, they all pretend they’re fish and it’s time to spawn.  Of course, there are no pictures, but it’s mentioned and repeated.  To a large extent, this is how society feels – no big deal and even maybe kinda cute – but all it takes is one Tabitha King type, country hard and country narrow, to set the cops on you..  Here you have strength in numbers as there will usually be plenty of witnesses to deny anything filthy, disgusting, degrading, or obscene happened at such and such a time in such and such a place.  And reading is excellent; in its own right, of course, but also in that it gives you an excuse to be together.  If you actually do it, and I know you will, the kids will be able to stand up to considerable quizzing by officialdom and stick to their guns.  If anything of the nature does come to pass, deny once and then insist you be left alone.  You’re old enough, I don’t know about Sheila, to spit right back in the interviewers face the statistics that came out of the Albemarle Sound daycare case, when every kid interviewed by credentialed and concerned behavioral scientist turned into a bed wetting monster, overnight, and none of the kids who were not interviewed changed in any way.  Your rapists are a bunch of pussycats compared to a liberal with a degree.  Be cool.
       
       How much CAN you spread the word, so to speak.  One thing might be to consider how else you might use your Mozart level talent – genius.  What would be last choice, when I was a kid, fifty years ago, and living in what actually amounted, aside from the tradeunions, to quite a healthy and beautiful country, is, in the bleak ashes of insane materialism, now the first choice.  The little girl dashing down the sidewalk in her pink and white print dress will be a happier kid, and a better adult, if she ends up at your house, than channel fighting with boorish siblings and finally giving up to go and play with Barbie and Ken until the exhausted parents get home three or four hours later, another precious day of her life lost forever.  Bringing Erica’s Way into the mainstream, at least in a passive, tolerant sense, assuming not all that many families love each other enough to make it work for them, will be the greatest challenge ever faced by any writer.  It’s always easy to show you’re a stalwart and a stand-up kink of bloke by clucking over incest and pedophilia; the last bastion of the scoundrel.  On the positive side, you do have an identifiable and highly disagreeable adversary, Southern Fundamentalism.  Let them stand, as they surely do, for the irrational claptrap and watery applesauce of all religion; mock and degrade, a, their hypocrisy, for they are forefront diddlers for all their preachin’ and spoutin’, and, b, their cheap and tacky ignorant ways – listen to their music – in general, with the rampant alcoholism and philandering, in the true sense of the word.  Rotten fruit.  Have at ‘em.  A, you’ll enlighten some, and, b, you’ll reduce their bible-beating influence.  Stand firmly for freedom from religion of any sort, perhaps, paying homage as I do by tipping my hat in respect to the Amish and Mennonite sects, to whom religion actually seems to mean something more than shaking a finger at those perceived as less holy.
       
       As to both racism and culturalism, laugh at equality.  Sure everyone wants to be equal to the WASP, but most of the Encyclopedia Britannica is filled with our advances and contributions, so they have a long, long way to go.  The Chinese, for example, whom I happen to like very much, point out they invented this and that thousands of years ago, but they wouldn’t have invented anything more for thousands more years.  Hispanics are in the Britannica, but few and far between, and their general history is a library full of brutish atrocity in the name of their idiotic Madonna and child.  The blacks, as I frequently write, have earned their share through their vast as-needed contributions during the beginning and middle of the Industrial Revolution.  We should never execute them, we should never draft them, but they have their ways – I’ve lived and worked among them in Belize and Los Angeles  for fifteen years – and we have ours.  Since they’re against joining or conforming, our only alternative is to marginalize them and hope we throw in enough tokenist smoke and mirrors that no one gets it.  Small risk.  Semites should be deported, their property confiscated.  We have a place to send them, where Hitler, valiantly as he tried to find one, didn’t, so it’s time to send them.  Eastern Europeans should also be deported, as one bad one, and most are bad, neutralizes a dozen good ones.  What’s known as tough luck.
       
       A measure of the dept of our depravity as a society is the Super Polygraph.  If ever, on god’s green earth, there was an answer, this device is it.  Actually, it’s a computer program that can be run by virtually anyone and it simply characterizes people based on eight or ten seconds of video taken from the waist up.  We all can recognize, and characterize, extremes of behavior; made people, happy people, and so on.  The data base of the computer polygraph simply does it a thousand times more accurately than humans are able to.  The software was developed in Europe, initially to see if it could detect early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.  The researchers were stunned when a few seconds of video proved unerring in detecting the condition long before doctors could.  They further developed the system, and three years ago, when I saw the documentary, had it perfected.  And I mean perfected.  One hundred percent accurate.  A video of three people meeting at an airport; it could characterize the nature of the meeting and each participant’s role.  Imagine a single American Jew liking such a machine.  What on earth would my-son-the-lawyer do if a computer executed the right people, sent the right people to jail, and returned the right people to society, in a few minutes, each?  There’s an oy veh if ever there was one.  And, as I said, our very level of depravity is demonstrated by the fact that the machine has made not the slightest inroad in any system, when it should govern most of them.  And though it’s cut and dried by it’s very nature, there are still some fascinating aspects.  Could it be used, for example, to segregate psychotic children, you know, the kind that torment animals, early enough that remedial input might do some good, say age two or three?  Could kids like you, with superior talents and genius be, by the same token, provided with enhanced input and outlets?  As the system works today, the social cocoon is so important, who knows what lurks beneath the hair treatments and dance steps?  There are two very distinct kinds of criminal.  The more-or-less victim of circumstance and bad company, one-crime-per-customer, and the dedicated hellhound, not only willing to do, but happy  to teach and lead anyone he can use.  The first should be freed, the latter executed.  If I were an actual king, rather than a literal king, I’d commander the bridge over Royal Gorge in Colorado and build a little shack on it.  Suspects would sit over a trap door, the camera would roll, and I guess you can guess the rest.  Some would return from the middle of the bridge, free, and others, well, it’s a beautiful place to die.  Other spans could be used with the shack built off to the side so as not to disrupt traffic.  It’s going to far to suggest vultures be raised in the various ravines, as chickens are raised on a farm, and for the same reason, but sometimes overstating an idea has humorous implications, so I like trying it once in awhile.
       
       In 1984 I wrote a long novel subtitled: “The Only Manifesto You’ll Ever Need”.  Little besides digital electronics has changed for the better, a catastrophic amount for the worse, and, despite the passage of time, no ideological alternatives have occurred to me, so again with the repetition.  If you read much of my work, yes, you’ll find these themes repeated, though I certainly hope not with the numbing overkill associated with various misfortunes our Jewry has brought down on its head time and again through history, usually with vast collateral damage.  I have other themes, and if I’m not to drive David, my strong, silent editor at Nifty, up a wall, I better revert to one of them.  Very great letter from you.  Two thumbs up.  I wish you the best of health, as soon as you can stand, that is.
       
       
       Neither of the males were virgins, so they stripped matter-of-factly as at a doctor’s office or country club.  Naked, they stood side by side displaying for the child sitting on the ledge.  Erica had always been especially sensitive to beauty that had function.  A Yamaha street bike belonged in an art museum, yet it could carry two people a hundred miles in an hour on less than five dollars worth of gasoline.  The list included horses, beautiful and functional, television sets, wrist watches, and, while not endless, was long enough – just look at a late model Audi – to say, yes, here is what the Anglo devised and the Asian improved before being crippled by the mass and mindless imperative of socialism.  So it was the apparent functionality of the young virgin that impelled her to look, look, and look again at her pair of hugely aroused stags.  Both males were circumcised, her father jutting high from his athletic waist, seven inches or more, bent to his right, while Armando, equal in size, was perhaps even the more tantalizing, from an artistic point of view, his penis jutting straight and high between his corded, muscular legs.  Ten minutes passed before the tableau changed significantly, and it only changed in response to the whisper of the twelve year old, indicating she wanted to be naked, too.
       
       Both males took turns feeling her up for another ten minutes before gently stripping her.  Ryan and Armando stepped close to the child and she began stroking them tentatively in turn, sometimes using a hand on each.  “Daddy, tell me your story about Jimmy and Coach Kitt, first, okay?” she asked.
       “It happened when I was eleven,” Ryan said, mostly to Armando.  “Jimmy Lane was pure Chinese, adopted by the Lanes.  He was the most interesting boy I’d ever seen, with a slightly misaligned, if that’s the right word, features that gave his face more an aura than a look.  On American food, he’d grown tall for his age, but retained the willowy grace of his race as well as the tantalizing off-white, golden coloring.  He was dumbfounding beautiful, on top of being way handsome and utterly cute.  If ever I’d groaned with frustration and sighed with boredom over a long Victorian novel – Moby Dick refuses to leave my mind – it was payoff day in spades when we bonded over books.  That gave a foundation to computers, and yes, my monkeyshines, we had them when I was your age, and we not only had them, but they were primitive enough to give us a lifetime appreciation of the XP generation, with not a line of DOS to ruin one’s day.  Anyway, we had more in common than ‘puters, cars, music, and the usual preteen stuff, if anyone’s still interested in cars, that is, so even before school opened for seventh grade, we spent a fair amount of time at each other’s houses and became good friends, but with no funny business.
       
       “School started, duh, in September,” Ryan continued, “and we had to posture at something, being immature enough to care about being deemed nerds-for-life by the other kids, so we decided on basketball, because we were both too tall and gangly for gymnastics, which we’d probably have preferred.
       “Jeff Kitt wasted almost less than no time.  I was okay looking and my friend was a drop-dead knockout.  He asked if we’d come down after school so he could fit us with supporters in private, and said he’d like us to spend an hour or two with him, after that, and he could call our parents and drive us home, if we wanted.  There was nothing particularly suggestive in his manner when he talked to us, but we both got the impression that something was up, and a new door was being offered.  We accepted, finished our classes, and returned to the gym at three-thirty.  On the way, Jimmy said he’d understand if I wanted to be fitted in private, and I said the same thing to him.  I guess there were a hundred words unspoken to each that we said, but, nervous and embarrassed as we were, we were both suddenly bonded as never before by an electric charge that could have lighted half a city.
       
       “Jeff Kitt was six-three and a former state swimming champ who, at twenty four, had not gone a quarter inch to seed.  He didn’t work out and he wasn’t boxy, just way sleek with a hawkish,  pretty businesslike face, and a gentle but distinct way about him.  I wouldn’t so much say we liked him, you know, on first impression; more that we felt comfortable with him, trusted him, and sensed he’d lead us somewhere rather than just flapping at the diddle game, which is what most union teachers specialize in. 
       
       “Practically walking on top of each other, half knowing why, half uncertain, we made out way through the empty gym and found his office.  His door was open and we walked in.
       
       
       “Have a seat,” Jeff said, nodding at the sofa, “and if you prefer you cokes without rum, speak now or forever hold your peace.”  The eleven year olds looked at each other trying not to go all wide-eyed.  Nodded dumbly, not knowing whether they were accepting or declining.  “Rules, rules, rules, the mature athlete sighed as he retrieved a liter bottle of the soft drink from the small officer fridge and reached into a desk drawer for a flask.  “If you guys are going to go off the deep end on anything,” Jeff elaborated, “you might as well do it with booze, now, thus saving your parents years of false hopes.”
       Both children nodded, trying not to grin
       
       “Cigarettes, no,” their teacher continued, “one puff, a few coughs, a little dizzy feeling, not unpleasant, and, hey, that wasn’t any big deal, how ‘bout another.  One puff, not one cigarette, and most kids who try that puff, okay?  Some rules, some of the time, kablooey, and guess how you pay.”  This he said handing the boys their red plastic cups and pulling the chair from behind his desk to sit facing them.  “You pay by doing extra well, overall; in conforming, most of the time.  You have privileges others you age can’t even imagine, you’re satisfied, where they’re frustrated, you’re beginning to know, while they’re searching, and you perform while they dither.  Specifically, you’re coming up on algebra.  You have two choices.  First, if you are absolutely – marrow deep – convinced that you have strong artistic inclinations, and, frankly, it’s unlikely you have the degree required, in the first place, and know it, in the second place, but there are exceptions, so I mention it, ignore algebra, geometry, and chemistry.  Take you lumps.  Bad grades, second rate colleges, no scholarships, it’s not an attractive list, but if you’re spending the four or five hours a day it takes to excel in the hard sciences on crafting exquisite models, taking excellent photographs, reading quality mainstream fiction and non-fiction, or anything along the creative or artistic line, music, for example, you’ll end up ahead of your college cousins, and have no student loans to repay, to boot.  The second choice fits that vast majority of boys and girls your age, ninety-eight out of a hundred, or something like that, is not to take algebra, but to slay it.  Find alternative texts, knock on the doors of strangers, asking for answers and explanations, eat, sleep, and drink it, if you seem talented or not.  Totally kill, kill, kill it, to the point of actually understanding, and you’ll have a foundation on which you can build anything from a career in the arts to head accountant for NASCAR.  If you end up bookkeeper at the local bowling alley, you’ll still thrill to their profits and may be of value when it comes to eliminating losses.  Offhand, I can’t think of door in the world that would be open to a media studies major and closed to a math grad.  You may not study dolphins with a hard degree, but you won’t, without one, ‘less dad owns the aquarium.”
       
       It was pretty hard not to grin, impossible not to be happy, even if the subject was algebra.
       
       “That’s my essential sermon,” Jeff continued, “you’ll hear it often.  As far as the ball playing goes, that’s up to you.  The only thing I don’t want to see is you out there pounding your joints to pieces, at your ages and states of physical development.  Very easy does it.  You both come from prosperous families.  Leave the agony of victory and defeat to those kids who can benefit from athletics.  Play for fun, to keep in basic shape, to develop agility, to be with your friends, and let it go at that.  Under no circumstances join the cheering club, they’ll be in wheel chairs by the time they’re forty, or wish they were.  Clinically speaking, you have so much lifespan in your joints, wrists, elbows, shoulder, knees, and ankles, to name the major groups.  Wear and damage to these organs is cumulative, and when it exceeds the body’s ability to cope and compensate, the results are a painful disaster, beginning with arthritis and ending up and spinal fusion and total disability.  This doesn’t mean you have to be namby-pamby or neurotic like a kid in a movie, and the human body is quite tolerant of a fair amount of stress and exertion, but it all counts up at the end and nothing is more classic than going from marathoner, actually worse than cheering, to running a marathon of pain to get to the toilet.
       
       “Okay, sermon and chalk talk out of the way.  We’re moving right along, and just guess where we’re going to end up.”
       Both boys looked happy but remained silent, certain, yet hardly daring even to hope.
       “Safe!” the coach yelped.  Maybe they did sort of like him, too.  “Not at Home, but against the odd elbow and knee that can cause profound discomfort.  Safer anyhow.  And half of it’s legit; you do need to have just the right size cup to play comfortably and still get the protection.  But half of it is not legit, therefore you have the option of opting out, entirely, taking several home and choosing the best on the grounds you’re likeliest to know, or going out, changing into your b-ball uniforms and comeback here, either individually or together, or even at another time if you’re embarrassed, confused, and feel, at the moment, you don’t want to know.  But you’re being confronted, you have to stand up for yourselves, it will happen again and again with each of you, because you’re extremely attractive males at exactly the pubescent state boylovers find most irresistible, possibly having, to be very frank about it, sperm, and possibly not quite yet.  So, up and at ‘em, and I’ll expect the two of you back in here, in uniform, and a few minutes, but not until you’ve made a clean sweep of the facility to be sure no one’s here and checked that both doors are locked from the outside.  Okay?”
       
       Two nods, two butts, four elbows followed, in six or seven minutes, by two very nervous adolescent faces.
       “Come on in,” Jeff whispered, “and why don’t you lock my door to be on the ultra safe side.”  Jimmy turned around and shot the old-fashioned bolt.
       “This is how it starts with a lot of attractive males you age,” the young man said, examining a pile of small boxes and picking one.  “Gym teachers, coaches, camp councilors, clergymen, pool guards, and boys’ club staffers, that’s a partial list, tend to like teaching boys.  The vast majority are passive and only interested in willing victims, but there are the lunes and cranks, even some who are domineering and violent.  That’s why I mentioned standing your ground.  Like anything else, a little practice doesn’t hurt, so we’re going to roll-play; I’m going to be a gym teacher attempting to molest you while fitting you for your cups.  Assume I’m alone in a locked office with you.  I want you to pretend you don’t like it.  Jimmy, your data sheet says you’re four months older than Ryan, so why don’t you start.  Stand up and let me get behind you, okay?”
       
       The Asian beauty rose nervously.  First Jeff stood in front of him, the athletic cup in his hand.  “I’ve got to be really certain it’s just right, so it may take a few minutes, okay?” the man whispered.
       “Can’t I do it and tell you?” Jimmy said.
       “Everybody’s suing everybody these days,” he replied, “and the groin is a sensitive area.  It won’t take more than a minute.”
       “I guess so, then,”  the boy murmured.
       “It’s the Jews,” the bad coach said, “hundred million lawsuits on file, think of that; never would have happened if that guy had got Roosevelt, anyway, it’s beaucoup, so we’ve got to get this right the first time.”
       “Let me do that,” Jimmy said as Jeff stood in front of him, pulling down the front of his basketball shorts.
       “What’s wrong?” Jeff taunted, “you a six year old in disguise?”
       “Just let me do it, okay?”
       “I have to.  None of the other boys got uptight?  What’s your problem?”
       “Guess,” the boy spat back.
       Jeff laughed.  “Perfect,” he exclaimed.  “Pretty obvious I was gong to lose teeth or fingers if I went any further.  Ryan, do you want to try.  Not much too it, really, just be polite at first, you’re going to stimulate a lot of okay guys over the next couple of years, and you’re too attractive to make it all their faults, so be mellow if you can, but knock off the nice real quick if it’s necessary.  If you get in an outright rape situation, give in; it’ll hurt like hell and you’re butt’ll be sore for a few days, but it’s totally survivable, and the alternatives might not be.  Get checked up, report it, and testify.  But avoid it, best bet.  
       “Now,” the young adult continued, “again there’s an opportunity to stand off, but if you decide to stay I want you to know that I want to get completely naked with both of you naked, also, and engage in homosexual activities with you for the next hour or two.  Then one more tot of rum,  dinner at Lloyd’s, and home by seven. Okay?”
       
       Two nods.
       
       “I really do want to see that you get the right fit,” Jeff then said, moving behind the tall, graceful Asian.  His arms went around the preteen, his hands finding the boy’s belly inside his jersey and running in large, slow circles around his front.  He reached for Ryan, moving the boy in front of himself and beginning to molest him as he had the older boy.  
       “Are either of you experienced with an adult male?” he whispered between their heads.
       Both shook indicating the negative.
       “Okay,” he said, “some partners like to quiz and ask questions and some don’t.  Like religion, the freedom to avoid it is sacred, so, if you are experienced, but want to keep it secret, just say: ‘Sorry, I’m not into that kind of stuff,’ assuming you want the physical part to continue.  If you do want to share, truth only.  If you want your partner, assuming he’s normal, to get his hands off you quick, just try being verbally aggressive, ‘Oh, yeah, grab that dick,’ something like that.  I guess it’s kind of a psychological game, but educated perverts strongly favor boys who are shy but willing, not those who are predatory and precocious, usually a/ka hustlers.
       “So,” Jeff went on, “how about boys your age, you know, sleepovers and that kind of thing, or girls?”
	“I’m not sure,” Jimmy Lane said as Ryan shook his head in the negative.
       “You do have a tendency to say absolutely the right thing,” Jeff couldn’t help laughing (briefly).
       “I guess that sounds kinda stupid,” the Asian boy blushed.
       “No, perfect,” Jeff assured him, “One of the reasons it’s all so exciting is that you don’t always know.  It’s looks, touches, accidental bumping, a tone of voice, a laugh, but I doubt a wink, that’s pretty obvious, and you don’t know whether it’s signaling or inadvertent – your interpretation – and innocent, or, if in-innocent, how in-innocent.
       “And believe me,” he concluded, “I’m not promising to come up with any answers, but just to listen if you want to verbalize.”
       
       “Mom and Dad adopted two of us,” Jimmy began, “I was three and my sister was an infant.  She’s just turned eight.  We call her Hen because she’s decided she ain’t gonna be no chick when she grows up.  We get along, so well, we’re I guess what you’d call pretty close.”
       “Okay,” Jeff encouraged, “but let’s get mature about this and slip out of our shorts so we can jerk off together while you’re telling what happened, Jimmy, okay?”
       
       The coach stripped the two eleven year olds, molesting each as he drew their jerseys up and off, then exposing the elder, Jimmy, first, guiding him into a display for Ryan, whom he also got quickly naked, stripping himself before standing close in front of the side-by-side preteens.  Both boys were fully developed, standing six inches, Ryan slightly bent, Jimmy, like Armando, straight.  Both had been circumcised and jutted toward their instructor at a forty-five degree angle.  Jeff was an almost spectacular seven inches, obviously hard as wood, and uncircumcised.  He began masturbating slowly, his pupils immediately following.  “Okay,” he whispered.
       
       “Well, we do get along and spend a lot of time together; Ryan knows, and, well, I guess she’s kind of growing up because, well, you know, she’s kind of present more.  I mean, when I’m working on my model ship, she even wants to sit in my lap sometime, but not, you know, so much like a little kid, and when we watch “The History Channel” she sits close when she could sit two feet away.  Like that line from ‘Oklahoma’, she ‘laughs at my jokes too much.’  And I feel it as much as she does.  I love having her close, and when I have time to daydream a little, it’s about her, and I run to the bus, because she’s on it.  We’re careful in public to be like brother and sister, but when we’re home, especially alone, the only time we’re a foot apart is when we use the bathroom and when we go to bed.”
       “He’s right,” Ryan said, “and if you want to drop dead sometime, look at them together.”
       
       “Do you want another sermon?” Jeff asked.  Both nodded as they continued slowly masturbating, eyes trained.  “One girl in five has a sexual relationship with a family member while she’s underage,” quoted the speaker.  “So it would be hard to invent a tire valve, much less the wheel.  That’s a hard statistic to break down, but here my take on incest: first, you have to do some basic categorizing, attractive potential partners versus unattractive – primarily obese physique and/or disagreeable nature – partners.  Assuming normality in this aspect, the next question is whether the experience is favorable or negative.  The first one’s tough, starting with basic definitions, and the second, a poser.  The prejudice is so great and irrational, it creates the victim, but in how many cases?  How many fathers and daughters or brothers and sisters, to name the two most common vectors, would mate happily on a desert island where no one would ever know?  It you stipulate the female was raised solely by the adult male, the rate of willing compliance would likely be near one hundred percent, with full penetration by the male occurring when the child was five or six.  The girls reaction would be the same as girls’ reactions are to their husbands; largely favorable with some exceptions, depending on the vagaries of human nature.  A small percentage would become adoring lovers, another enthusiastic, a third group would be welcoming, another, tolerant, down to the frigid partner of legend who’d come to hate the man for-what-he-did-to-her.  Girls wrested from society above the age of seven would submit willingly half the time, again, stipulated that there is no question of rescue.  After that, it gets interesting.  How many, say, twenty year old, married daughters would take their fathers as lovers, assuming a comfortable living situation and no prospect of returning to society?  How many thirty year old girls, maybe young mothers?  How many would change from one category  to the other, either way, over the years?  
       
       Oddly enough, it’s probably very similar to the ethical question concerning lifeboats.   Teachers dither over it, but there is ample evidence that actual castaways made almost extraordinarily rational decisions on who should live and who should die.  No surprises.  Same with the father and daughter or brother and sister on the island.  You’d find a cross section, if you could interview a thousand such castaways, based on our human capacity to reason.  Some good, many okay, some bad, a few ending in the suicide of the female.  You can vary the scenario any way you want; a girl with three uncles, a father with ten daughters, fraternal twins, whatever you can think of, and the statistics would come out just as they do in sweethearts, young lovers, couples who are engaged, young married couples, and couples, married or otherwise, in their eighties.  In other words, so many forces and complexities are at play that it’s not a case of not knowing, it’s a case of you can’t know.  And why would you want to, for sure?  Remember this:  “MSN” published a survey recently in which a large number of subjects who’d been married five years or more said they were, on average, zero point one percent happier being married than they assume they’d be if they’d stayed single.  One tenth of one percent happier, far within the bounds of sampling error, so the number is meaningful only in what it doesn’t say.  Does that mean you and Hen well be one tenth of a percent happier, five from now, if you have incest than if you don’t?  Who knows, but my bet is that you’ll be ninety percent unhappier if you don’t.  You read it all the time.  The things one misses out on, not their failures and tragedies, are what dog old people.”
       
       “Thanks,” Jimmy whispered.
       “Thank me seventy year from now,” the handsome athlete responded, adding in a hoarse whisper:“ Have you seen her or touched her?”.
       “That’s been the hard part.  Not.” said the child.  “She leaves the door to the bathroom open when she’s in the shower, so I have to look at the wall, and stands, I think, in her underwear in front of the mirror in her bedroom, so that’s more wall.  Most of the time she’s okay that way, but I have to be careful.”
       “Jimmy?” Jeff asked, “how about your parents.  That’s the biggest enigma in a situation like this.  A large group thinks it’s cute for their children to play sex games and are open about it even to the extent of joining them.  Another group, I think a lot smaller, would go ballistic, even to the extreme of calling in the police, and end up indignant and spiteful, perhaps transmitting their feelings to future generations.  A third major group would ignore even obvious signs.  For example, finding you and Hen in bed because you’d fallen asleep while making love, probably after, not while, and maybe act a little upset, and leave you together without it becoming an issue, one way or another.  Sensitive parents even guide their children together, if they feel there’s a strong underlying attraction, just as they warn the boy off and protect the girl if they sense an antagonistic or a fundamentally inappropriate relationship.  And that brings up another point.  If you mate with Hen, how will you feel if your dad does?  And that would come with considerable overburden, because he’s the one who’s made her the girl you love, to say nothing of paying the bills, so, to be crude, he certainly deserves a shot.  Then there’re your friends.  It’s very common for an incestuous brother and sister to share their lovers, privately or together.  How would you feel lying in bed watching Ryan tense over Hen, her arms and legs wrapped around his coltish body, while he ejaculated inside her for a full minute, knowing you’d feel his hot sperm on your penis the instant you mounted?”
       
       “Good,” the boy whispered.
       “I’d want you to be first sometimes so I could feel your sperm on me, too,” Ryan added.
       
       “Well,” Jeff intoned, “it will be a happy girl who makes those decisions.  But,” he continued, “it does bring up the question, stated bluntly, of quantity.  Remember, the Puritans were more right than wrong when they preached against anything on the assumption that anything led to everything, and, presumably, a collapse of society because every bedspring was squeaking all day and all night in every house on every street.  They were also partly wrong, ignoring the human side of it and the ability to discriminate and restrain.  That’s the alcohol speaking.  Whispering: ‘addiction’.  (Cigarettes, on the other hand, shout.)  America is developing into a nation with more categories of dysfunction than Carter has little liver pills or Marshall has subpoenas.  My theory is if you can find a harmless one to fully indulge, and none, even reading, as I’ve already mentioned, are harmless in the extreme, then you can laugh at the others.  An addiction to sex play, limited to say ten appropriate hours a week, can’t possibly hurt any of you, and, who knows, if you hint your way, so to speak, into your parents acceptance they might think you’re so cute a baby from your kid sister couldn’t help but add to your lives.”
       
       
       Well, there’s my turn.  We seem to have pages in common, which supports Jeff’s contention that there are major common denominators to illicit relationships very similar to those in sanctioned pairings.  
       
       Another day with zero mail.  I brag from time to time about acing the mensa test in half the allotted time, which I did, and thus, since I took it absolutely cold, award myself an IQ well in excess of four hundred, but that’s no help against the mail mystery, especially after the torrent that greeted my first stories, over a hundred in the first week and two hundred in a months or so.  I suppose politics and anti-Semitism, you know, people are readin’ for strokin’, but that doesn’t fit because virtually every letter I got was from a teacher or professional, and, if they mentioned it at all, which was rare, were encouraging rather than put off..  In fact, in all my mail I got one “sick f---“ flame, about what you would have seen in a Napster chat room in the first six or eight seconds.  The amazing thing is how sincerely it matters not.  I’m writing, bleary eyes and all, at the rate I ever did, yea, if anything faster, because I don’t have all that mail to cope with.  And a note here; if you want to share e-mail addresses, you know, post your own, and you do get mail (that would be interesting) I’d suggest not attempting entering into “conversations”.  I tried, repeatedly, you know, the new wrier trying to be a good guy, but they correspondence never went anywhere and was a waste of time and creative energy.  Not saying Don’t, just my personal experience.
       
       We are, and there’s not other way to put this, hands-down smokin’!  Over half a novel in six days, a novel being sixty thousand words.  And you have three fresh batteries, plus the one in your machine.  What’s that, about twelve hours?  Everything’s posted with a date and even time, so we could go for a world record.  That would be something to tell your grandkids, assuming you comply with minimal convention, that you, at the age of twelve, and while taking giant new steps in your life, co authored not only what’s rapidly turning into the best of all novels, but the most speedily written.  Very, very good girl.
       
       Did I say your turn?  This time I mean it.  I ought to post this as a file, so please try to have some, you know, conclusion in your next episode, but, again, you’re writing what happened, so if it hasn’t happened – am I kidding? –  that’s okay.
       
       
ELECTRIC LETTERS – END FILE II
       

