WRITER'S NOTEBOOK

by Holly Rennick

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This is an abridgement of my re-write of Jenny Wanshel's "Boy Magnets".  When my Writer's Notebook juggernaut got to five times the length of Wanshel's, it occurred to me that I could maybe write something original.  Been doing that since.  At last I was able to contact Wanshel and she graciously permitted my venture into her world.

I've since spun several Notebook subplots into stand-alone shorts and now I'm stripping Notebook of their rough beginnings.  Plus I'm extracting a set of briefer sections that I'll odd-lot as "Notebook Extracts", freeing Notebook of a yet bit more clutter.  Plus I'm revising a tad of the remaining text.

But, okay, in a few places maybe I added more than I knocked out.

At the bottom of this is a plug for my web page where you can find the spin-offs and, of course, much that's newer.

PROLOG

An up-front warning: This is first-hand story about sexual intercourse.  As I'm not married, obviously that's one illicit aspect.  It's ultimately consensual and pretty normal physiologically, but involves minors.  It might be an Fm, fm in erotica classification, depending on how far you want to count.

There is a disproportionately high amount of copulation for a balanced short story.  Of that I'm aware because I read good literature.  But sexual conquest is part of what this story's about.  Bear in mind that the sexual act is a temporary endeavor, say ten minutes worth.  Friendship, what this story is really about, is for the long haul.

This is no novel, but I'd hope that you get some sense of the characters.  They have their personalities, even if you don't have their biography.  I hope that you at least get to understand me, as I'm not that complex.

I fully appreciate why some readers may not care to read about seduction and incest, topics that find themselves in the ensuing pages.  It's not by my design, but rather because life's interwoven.  As with unhealthy porn web sites, you can opt out.  I don't think, however, that what follows is bad for you.  Ultimately, it's about being healthy.

I'd encourage those of you about to exit to not strike all varieties of sexual liaisons from your literature perusal, however.  Romantic procreation is the act in the socially acceptable perspective.  There are bestiality, sadomasochism and homosexuality out there too, as long as you read for literary merit, I suppose.  There are many shelves in the library.  Read about what you like, but do read.

JOSH

I am the last teacher in the world you'd expect to have sexual relations with a student.  I'm good-looking and no slut.  My dates have always behaved in a respectful way.  There are ways to woo and I ask the effort.  I prefer relationships more wholesome than brushing a married guy at the Xerox.  What I mean is that I don't go around just looking for a lay.  I've been sexually active for a little more than ten years and have had intercourse with seven men.  If every twenty-eight-year-old professional woman revealed her statistics, I'm no fast mover.

I've taught English at Capton Springs Middle School for six years.  We're a seventh to ninth, not sixth to eighth as in most districts.

Josh Harrison was just an average looking thirteen-year-old in last year's fourth period.  He was about 5-feet, 6-inches, dark hair, blue-green eyes, scrawny and scraggly.  Other than details of color, most boys satisfy such description in their mid-school years.  I never looked at Josh twice, nor did I register much about any other boy, for that matter.  They change so fast.

I like their early adolescents because they're not yet repugnant know-it-alls.  They're just curious kids.  The girls still have their dolls and the boys still sing in music class.  They love discovering new things.

One February Friday, as Josh passed my desk at dismissal, I felt his gaze.  I'd worn a blouse showing just a touch of cleavage and it's not unusual for seventh-grade boys to look.  Let them peek, I say.  They're at the point where girls begin to get interesting.  If they're really, really lucky, maybe they see an inch of crack, interesting to them, anyway.

I always wear a bra, for Heaven's sake!  Nothing's flopping around.  No one would even notice me on the street.  I keep my knees together in class.  Giggles about your "beaver" (mid-school terminology) wreck classroom ambience.  It's just not my nature to prudishly shun normal attire.

Looking up, I expected Josh to blush and move on.  But before he did that, level with my gaze I discerned the protuberance of a pubescent boner.

Believe it or not, I honestly wondered what it was, given all the worry that a kid will come to school with a gun or something.  (Not at Capton Springs, for Heaven's sake, but at some places.)

I of course averted my stare; teachers don't pursue this sort of thing.  He sees a little boob; I see a little reaction.  Fair's fair.  As Josh hobbled out, I was surprised at hardening in my bra.  It's a good feeling, the swelling of your tissue.  There's nothing wrong with women's feelings.  It was just surprising.  I touched my breast to be sure.  Josh was really big!  Nobody else was in the room and I touched again.

For my first time ever, I had actually experienced an arousal from a student!  Well, he was kind of cute.

I thought about Josh off and on throughout the day, about that erection.  At thirteen, most boys have eraser heads.

That night I dreamt.  I don't remember the entire dream, just that we were alone up high in the Rockies and I was trying to pull down his pants.  His trousers snagging on his penis made me more horny.  He was so close, yet always hooked behind the cotton.  I woke up frustrated and finished myself off.  

How did it ever get to where single girls can blithely announce in mixed company that we fornicate, but can't admit that we masturbate?

And a kid's hard-on did this to me!  I probably need a two-party sex life.

CINDI

My best friend, Cindi Barton, teaches science.  We're the same age, but she took a couple of extra years for her Secondary Ed degree.  In the faculty section of the Capton Springs yearbook, Cindi's the one who looks like a student.  It's her bright look, even in the photography that defines yearbooks.  I'm the teacher that looks frozen.  I don't photograph very well.

Cindi has a hundred great qualities.  She's upbeat.  She's generous.  She's honest.  She'll pick up on how you're doing.  She'll tell you how it is with her.  She'll stand up for you.  She'll even give you a little kiss when you need one.  She'd not withhold what you need to know but she doesn't bug you with details you'd prefer to do without.  I've known her forever, ever since she started, that is.

A thing about Cindi, to put it simply, is that she's not always discriminate with guys.  He's nice, fun, lonely, whatever, and for her, that means bedtime.  I tell her it works against her because they don't have to earn it.  I'd just as soon not know where her dates end up -- her sheets or his.

Does it matter?  Cindi's my friend and I'm glad she's who she is.  It's my duty, though, to help her avoid the creeps.  I can tell from their conversations.  Dumb guys think that women enjoy allusions to body parts.  She knows I'm pretty astute, a "verbal detective" she calls me.  Friends help each other.

And she likes me because I'm who I am.  She doesn't think I'm a prude, just because I'm not very forward with guys.  She wants to help.  She's always scoping, figuring whose type a new guy might be.  She doesn't just claim the better ones, which she could do.  She just says that my style costs me because they have to work forever.  I figure that it's better to wish for more sex than to wish you'd had less.  She agrees in principle.

I'm just not the risk taker.  She'll put her IRA (the part they make her save) in some flashy startup.  I put mine, plus some extra each month, into things like airport bonds.  I'll retire comfortably, I suppose, and she'll be penniless.  We'll be old maids and she might have to live with me.  We wouldn't do well sharing a place now, but we'll be way postmenopausal.  Friendship looks ahead.

Cindi and I had a tennis date the day after my Josh dream.  The two of us are well matched, but she tends to charge the net too much, allowing me the easy lob.  She says that I tend to be too predictable, always going for safe returns.  She knows where to go before I swing.  As doubles, we're better than the sum of our parts.  The only ones that beat us are girls who have tennis wardrobes.  We just play for fun.

Cindi beat me, 12 to 9.  We don't play regular sets.  Over coffee afterwards (the loser pays) I told Cindi the whole Josh thing, girl to girl.  As far as him peaking down my blouse and getting hard, it was just chat.  There are only so many teachers' tales to tell, so we just recycle them.  There's the erection story, the garment-comes-loose story, the start-her-period story, etc.  Kids have nightmares that they're the only one.  How many times have we helped a girl who started menstruation right there at her desk?  Cindi's done the odds: once per year per teacher.  I don't know if she actually calculated it or if it's just her experience.  I myself have seen three.

Visible hard-ons aren't rare at all.  A boner falls in the range of normal thirteen-year old behavior.  I probably see a dozen per year without even looking.  Big deal!  No, that's not right.  They're fun to note, thinking maybe you're the first.  An erection gets mentioned over coffee, especially if the boy is cute.    That I found it a bit erotic falls in the range of a normal woman's response.  A boy wagging his biggie at girls I report, though.  District policy.  School's supposed to be safe from perverts.

The fact that I saw Josh's thus wasn't in itself a major deal.  It's a thirteen-year-old behavior.  That I noticed falls in the range of a normal woman's interests.  When I admitted that I got excited, though, Cindi grinned big.  If she likes a story, she broadcasts it.  If she has an idea, she shares it.  She doesn't expect me to always agree, fortunately.

"You do anything about it?"

"Good grief, Cindi!"

"No, not that way.  Like when we think about it later."

We're just normal girls.  It's normal and I don't keep secrets from her very well.

I think I smiled.

"It's good to get it out of your system," she grinned approval.

Then she became thoughtful.  "You know, Holly, at least three teachers are having affairs with students here, two men and one woman.  One of the men was caught, but they hushed it up and he's still poking.  He's responsible about no baby."

I shouldn't be that amazed about the males.  From the front of the class you see all colors of panties.  Leaning over the girls to help, you see their little buds, as their training bras are oversized.  I can bet that some men get horny, especially with the ninth-graders who have ripe pieces of fruit, so to speak.  What's illegal can still be understandable.

And girls know what they're playing with from the movies.  R means rentable.  X means rent from a girl clerk.  You can see our girls' sexual awakening in how they adjust their blouses after they get off the bus.  It's their little push-up bras, the undone button, the near-vertical panty-line.  The girls are after the boys and get a man, I suppose.  But, if you believe the stuff you read, most of them aren't doing it at thirteen.  Fifteen, maybe.  Seventh graders are usually just giggling.

There's not much at Capton Springs to titillate a grown female, though.  Gender difference in maturation is pretty pronounced.

So my curiosity about "and one woman" got the better of me.

We'd gone on for pizza, since neither of us usually cooks ahead.

"Who was the woman?  The one having an affair with a student, I mean."

"I'm not telling.  I'll tell you who the student is, though.  You know Zak Gaston?"

"Zak in ninth?  Pretty average in seventh.  What's the attraction?"

"Well, he isn't perfectly average, if you catch my drift.  The girls in ninth know all about him."

"How so?"

"Well, the rumor was that he was still virgin because he was too big.  Lots of ninth-graders have had sex, you know."

"Lots?"

"Lots."

Things change, I guess.

ZAK'S SISTER

Grading papers Sunday bored me stiff, so I called Cindi to see if she was game for a rematch.

On the way to the court, she explained Zak's situation.  "Three girls felt Zak's penis at his sister's slumber party.  She's a junior.  First they wanted him to play strip poker, but he wouldn't.  He knew they'd rig it."

"It'd be easy," I agreed.  "All them against him."

"Better to cheat fair so everybody's naked together," judged Cindi, then continued.  "Three of them snuck into Zak's room at night and held the cover over his head so he couldn't tell who.  They sat on him pulled off his boxers.  He knows it was three because they took turns getting him hard.  He couldn't help it.  They had a ruler, so there must have been a bet or something.  They measured his balls, too.  One girl made him squeeze her boobs; he liked that part.  The last one rubbed herself across his cock, but he didn't shoot, not when they were there, anyway.  They'd have made a big deal of it."

"They'd start goosing him everywhere, like in the band room," I agreed.

"At the last, they uncovered his mouth and kissed him.  They left three pairs of panties on his pillow.  So high-school girlish, right?  Except for their giggles, the whole thing was perfectly silent, them and him."

"Poor kid.  They should beat off the boys who want them to."  I was, I'll admit, pressing the heel of my hand into my lap.  My hand was under my purse, of course.

Cindi noticed.  "I had your reaction, too," with tiny tongue flip.

"What reaction?" straightening up a bit.

"A big purse helps," Cindi's perfect deadpan.

And then back to Zak, "He's pretty sure who two were, the way they blushed next morning.  His sister could be the other, he suspects, because she's started getting these videos when their folks are out.  They have a basement TV.  Did you ever see 'Undercover Agent Uncovered'?  You should.  Zak's sister just wears her summer nightie, even though it's winter, and scoots right next to him on the couch."

"Bra?" I asked.

"She'll go to the bathroom and ditch it."

"Bingo.  And she'd let other girls jack off her little brother?  She's a weirdo.  Just my opinion, of course."

"It's not weird.  She'll just hop into his lap in the middle of the movie and wrap his arms under her boobs.  During a sex scene, she'll snuggle so his hard-on pokes her butt.  He has one constantly."

"I wonder why?"

"She'll even say things about the movie, like, 'Bet she never tells.'"

"Why not just, 'Let's do it too, dear brother of mine?'"  I'm direct.

"Good point.  To get more comfy, she'll move his arms up.  He can bump her nip, but can't squeeze, if you get the difference.  Or she'll tug her neckline out for him look down.  She looks, too, to see if she pulled it out enough."

"Tease the guy to death!"

"Well, he's just a guy," Cindi justified.  "When he touches a boob, she kind of raises her arm before trying to escape."

"His sister?"

"I already said so.  If he puts a pillow on his lap, she tries to steal it.  'Pervboy peeked and got a biggie!'  That kind of stuff."

"The guy probably wants to slide under the sofa," I judged.

"She'll crawl right on top of him to get it.  If a button comes loose and a boob pops out, she claims it doesn't matter because they used to take baths together anyway.  She makes him button her back in because she says he started it."

"Where's my big purse?"

"No.  Wait a minute.  Him seeing her panties doesn't matter either, she says, because there's nobody home and he better not spank her."

"Like you wrestle in your little panties and he doesn't see everything?"  We know exactly how they pull up between.

"He sees enough.  He's grabbed her you-know-where, but not long enough to do anything."

"Don't blame him," I warned.

"She tries to rub, too, with her leg.  Or maybe the back of her arm gets.  Like with her boobs, accidental is fair."

"She pregnant yet?"  I figured that if she's dumb enough to do this much, she won't know about birth control.

"Naah.  They end up thighing each other like you'd do for a dry-fuck, anyway.  Nothing really gets anywhere," Cindi giggled at the inference.  "She's probably watching his breathing, seeing what's working."

"Just a matter of time."  This much I knew.

"And then Zak found her Valentine's panties in his dresser, bikini ones with little red hearts.  Like their mom didn't sort right?  When he threw them back, she asked if she should wear then, even if they don't stay up very well.  Bold City!  It's because she knows that brother's a virgin with a big one and won't tell on her.  She was the third girl, alright."

THIS TEACHER

By the time Cindi had spun out Zak's story, we needed to be on the court.  I aced her twice and she never recovered.  I had until lunchtime Monday to wonder about Zak's teacher connection.  I don't have a brother, so I've never thought much about sibling sex.  I am a teacher, though.

"And Zak slept with a teacher?" that next Monday.

"Well not exactly slept.  You can't get them overnight, except maybe on a fieldtrip.  Anyway, this teacher heard a version of the slumber-party story, and decided to help with his virginity," Cindi grinned.  "She can tell which boys are ready."

"They all want to look down our dresses," I reflected.

"So get pretty bras," Cindi agreed.

"I think there's a law about this kind of help," pulling her back to the particular student.  "He's nowhere near eighteen."

Ignored.  "So this teacher got Zak up on a stool to help in her book closet and held his waist to steady him, one hand on his belt buckle.  He kept shelving.  So she slid her hand down.  He kept working like he didn't notice."

"Then she stepped him down and put his hand on her sweater, her Cashmere.  She'd teach him how to make love if he'd kiss her.  Pretty straightforward, don't you think?  He was nervous, but he did it.  Nobody was around, but he was too scared right then.  They made a plan for Saturday.  They're still getting together."

"I'll bet it was Jessica Thomas," I deduced.  Jessica teaches PE.  The boys drool over her gym outfit.  It's like PE staff get to have nips, but real-subject faculty can't.  "Watch Gym Girl's hands behind her back during hall duty, right at the head of the stairs.  Half the ninth-grade boys have rubbed her sports bra collection, I'll bet."

"Three-fourths.  She's got a column in her grade book with checkmarks," Cindi speculated.

I'd use my Writer's Notebook for that sort of scorecard.

But Cindi knew I was feeling marginalized.  "Yours are as big, just a bit lower."  Cindi and I spar a lot, thus the "lower".  Jessica's just taller.

"Thanks, Miss High Rise.  How many A's are we?"  I beamed my sweetest smile to seal my retort.  Volley returned!

Then I added, "Nobody thinks I'm a tease because of my glasses."

"You should get contacts, Holly.  I've told you that forever.  Josh peeked.  Why don't you unbutton another button on that thing you're wearing and see what happens?"  She's always trying to get me to do stuff.

"Ohmygod, no," I giggled, forgetting Jessica.  "You make me feel like such a perv.  Like this?" boldly rearranging my collar.

"That's better.  That one has nice trim.  From Target?  Sorry I can't do a hard-on for you, but I would if I could, of course.  Let's see."  She wiggled her knees and looked down.  "Nope, nothing.  Where's that Viagra?  You do want to give Josh one again, right?"

"Curious, that's all."

"So let's practice.  Go lean over the salad bar and I'll count how many of these guys watch," Cindi ordered, surveying the nearby tables.

"No way!"

"Then re-button before you forget," Cindi advised.

After school she told me a few more things about Zak.  "After this teacher laid him, he told her all that about his sister messing with him.  Her boys tell her things all the time.  Is 'seduced' the right word if he agreed?"

"Close enough.  Her boys?" I wondered.

"It's not like a bunch or anything.  Kids need to talk to somebody."

"Bed 'em to build trust?"

"No way!  It's just a consequence.  Plus, if you fucked the class, it wouldn't be special and you'd be back to square one."

"Okay, so the teacher found out about Zak-boy's home life."

"This teacher's interested in sibling relationships.  Sex is complicated, right?"

"It's good we agree on at least one thing or we couldn't be friends."

"We also agree that you can't beat a pure cotton jumper.  Anyway, Zak really likes his sister.  He's spied on her, pretty well actually.  She knows, too.  Would you crack your door open at bedtime, him peeking?  The girl's cruel!  Well, maybe she's smart.  He should slip in and finish what she started."

"They'll have a six-fingered baby," I advised.

"The Pope invented that inbreeding thing to promote celibacy."  As if Cindi knows history!  She is Catholic, though.  I've gone with her to St. Bernadette's for Christmas.  When she misses a required mass she'll do a make-up.  Catholics have such options.  Catholic is a real church, in my book, not like these therapy ones with sermons like "Celebrating Menstruation" or "Standing against Globalization".  The Catholics invented globalization.

The poor Father probably quakes when she dutifully unloads her sins of the flesh.  As guilt wouldn't work, maybe he assigns her one-hundred Hail Marys and leaves it to then Lord to sort out.  Lots of parishioners never fuck around and leave the world a lot worse off, so God will let her in.

By Tuesday we were back to Zak.  I made notes in my Writer's Notebook in case it might make a story.

"But he has two problems: that Saturday with the teacher, he wasn't that good and he doesn't know if sister really will.  Some girls just like to prove they're in control.  This teacher's helping out, right?  Sister better like him from the very start 'cause she's got to live with him.  Incest is forever, they say."  Cindi loves the "they say".

"Sister and brother slipping away from the family reunion for a half-hour when they're old!  They can signal across the living room and two minutes later be on the guest bed," I suggested.

"Buck naked," Cindi added.  "Zak needs regular lessons from someone who knows her stuff."

"For educational use," I added, whatever that means.  Everything everywhere's educational.

"Getting her ready's cinch-o, once he knows how to finish her off," Cindi scripted.  "They're already on the sofa, folks out for the evening.  She'll cave in quick enough to a sweetie."

"I would any," I reflected,

"I know you would, Holly.  Anyway, while they're watching, he asks for advice about his girlfriend and they'll start smooching, practice like.  Then he can say he'd rather not bother with that stupid girlfriend any more.  Then he'll cop a feel.  She'll giggle and ask if his girlfriend fell for that maneuver.  He shouldn't do that because he's not her boyfriend."

"Then she'll add that they could pretend," I contributed.  When Cindi gets a yarn started, you just sit back and enjoy it, maybe hand beneath purse so she'll know you're enjoying how she's telling it.

"Pretend orgasms," Cindi laughed.  "After he begs enough, Sis will let him slip up her nightie.  It's not like he hasn't seen her moons when they were little.  But it's a little different these days.  He tries to kiss them.  She'll say okay, if he's careful.  She'll lean him back and drop a boob on his mouth.  She's smart enough to know the way."

With my friend Cindi, who needs an adult video?

"So she's just in her panties?"

"Her Valentines ones.  He'll say they'll always love each other, a boy's classic line, right?  Let him show her how special she is.  She'll like it.  They can just do it part way."

"Adam told that to Eve," I recalled and I don't even go to church.

"And they still begat Cain and Able," Cindi finished.  "And they begot some girls too.  Sex with your brother is Biblical, when you consider that there was a third generation."  It must be something from Sunday school.

Cindi returned to sexology, "Zak should be sliding her hand down his front.  See how much he wants her?"

"He's still in his pants?"

"Don't worry.  She already felt it with her girlfriends, of course, but she'll act like this is the first time.  'Oh, Zak,' and that stuff while he drops his pants.  She'll scoot down to rub her boobs against it to get a better view."

"He's supposed to be making her, not her, him," I suggested.

"Right, so she'll say that they'd better not because the folks will come home.  Or at least be done in two hours.  He'll slip off her Valentine ones while they judge the clock.

"She warned that they didn't stay up very well," I remembered.

"It's because I love you too, she'll decide."

"She like it, him being trained and everything?"

"Hurt like hell.  She was a virgin."

Ohmygod did we laugh!

I was thinking how strange it must be, your brother and your very first time.

"What do you think, Holly?  They're on the couch or hand-in-hand up to her room?  It would be more special where she could see all her things like Raggedy Anne.  She'll probably have a rubber ready.  That way she's protected from the very start."

"So who seduced whom?" admitting my confusion.

Cindi, of course, thought it was obvious.

"I love the Raggedy Anne bit," I told Cindi.  I was ready for my own bedtime reflection.  Nude like Zak's sister.  Zakless, though.

My friend Cindi has an eye for detail.  If she'd park her fanny, instead of running around all the time, and write her fantasies, Cindi could publish it.  She should read a variety of authors to learn their styles.  Fat chance!

Cindi returned to the teacher.  After all, Zak's teacher, not sister, got him first.  "So when this teacher unzipped him that Saturday, know what she found?  Eight inches and he's only fifteen and, get this, it curves up!"

"No way!  They just do that in movies."

"For real!"  Her eyes were wide.  "And he comes about five times.  That's why you need a boy lover.  Making it stay down's the trick.  Fight him off when you start getting sore, not like some Wendy's manager who rolls over and takes a nap."

I considered.  "I don't want a boyfriend just to train for his sister."

Cindi laughed as we returned to the here-and-now.  She knew where I'd been; I'd rather be the sister.

"Fucked today and forgotten tomorrow," she agreed. 

"Fun while it lasts, though" I added a bit wistfully.

She brightened with a thought.  "Maybe Zak will win at Science fair and go to State.  It's two days.  District gives us per diem."

"Like for being the chaperone, you mean."

"You'd not want an even number of boys, so Zak could get the single room."

"Well, you're the judge," I agreed.

"The honcho one, anyway."

"Well, I don't really think I'm going to go trolling for a thirteen-year-old."

But I did, of course.

WRITER'S NOTEBOOK

"My Niece, my Daughter" popped into my head as a story title from Zak's point of view.  Better yet, "My Niece, my Daughter, my Lover" about a two-generation guy.  Writers file away inspirations, in my case, into my Writer's Notebook.

My Writer's Notebook is where I capture my inspirations, the better ones to be nourished and the lesser to die unattended.  I'll jot plot synopses while the thought is fresh.  Rereading, I spot the weaknesses, of which there will be many, and start assembling the pieces.

My Writer's Notebook is a parking place for titles without stories, characters without homes, snippets of unlinked scenes, crafted phrases and imaginative word usage from my own reading that might someday be kernels for a work not yet foreseen.

My Writer's Notebook is where I note word usage, for example the disarray about  "cum".  Is it verb or noun?  According to American Heritage, "cum" means "together with", for example "our attic-cum-studio".  There's nothing sexual about the Latin preposition, other than that you might have intercourse in your attic-cum studio.  "Cum" is also a slang variant of "come, to arrive reach a particular state or condition."  Thus we have a verb with orgasmic potential.  According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "come" as a four-letter noun (perhaps originally from "come off") was used 1650 to mean "semen or other product of orgasm".  Pornographic three-letter "cum" fluid is on record only from the 1920s.

One can a fuck a million ways, but fuck tales are photocopies.  Balancing paragraphs, crafting complimentary verbiage, avoiding repetition yet placing necessary benchmarks is craft.

My Writer's Notebook is undisputedly an eclectic volume, but then perhaps so am I.

I've jotted a few plot lines.  Detail, connectivity, personality and atmosphere change an outline into a story.  Obviously, I've work to do if I practice what I preach.  They're just ideas for now.  If a publisher wants something pronto, it's good to have some concepts.  If you have to make it a little believable, use a setting you know.

Plus I even try poetry.  (Just amateur, of course.)

Then I get Cindi's reaction.  She's totally ignorant about literary criticism (I had a whole class about it.), but so what?  It's professional to get feedback.

So here's an example of how I get my material.

By next lunch, sexual-information-repository-girl was brimming with info.  We risked driving her Hobbling Honda (her name) to Salad Supreme.  Just one of us gets a plate and we split the price.  Cindi goes for the Jell-O.  Lo-cal, she points out.

"Here's stuff worth knowing," she offers, "if you're an author."  Cindi's picked up that most English teachers are closet writers.  Cindi's approach is to help with ideas.  She also, of course, just likes to talk.

I produced my Writer's Notebook to take notes.

"First of all, remember how I said that at least three faculty are getting a little something on the side."

"It got me curious, " I admitted.

"Well check this out.  I looked it up."  She pulled out a page written in her scrawl.  "It's more than three."

"Shakeshaft, Carol (2004) 'Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature', US Dept Ed says that 10.7 percent of K-12 girls and 8.4 percent of boys have had a sexual experience with a school employee.  Teacher relationships are the most common, of course.  Lower in grade school and higher in high school."

"Another Department of Education use of our tax money," I observed.

"So I got out my calculator.  If Capton Springs' 320 kids, that's thirteen boys doing us!  Yeow!  But these mid-school teachers got stupid:

   "Sarah Bench-Salorio, 28, California, 12 and 14  (They found dummy's e-mail.)

..."Nieka Arreola, 30, California, boy's age 14  (That's a name?  Was the boy's last name "forreskin'?)

   "Debra LaFave, 24, Florida, 14  (Cover-girl reading specialist.)

   "Mary Kay Letourneau, 34, Washington, 12  (Two pregnancies, same boy.  See the movie?)

   "Pamela Rogers Turner, 27, Tennessee, 13  (PE, not surprisingly.)

   "Toni Lynn Woods, 37, West Virginia, five of mid-school age  (Three vaginally, two oral.)

"And these are just ones from Fox News.  Google them, if you don't believe.  LaFavre had sex in her classroom, apartment and her SUV while the kid's fifteen-year-old cousin drove.  Like you'd ask his relative?"

She handed over her notes.

"Then I read this one where teacher catches two kids in the act, doing it all wrong.  So she teaches them separately.  They call her Teacher, even during.  The three end up in bed together."

"Weak plot.  Four fuck scenes."  Cindi's library!

"Would you believe eight?  No, seven.  Teacher has this faculty bridge foursome where the hostess always provides little prizes!  They first make the boy keep the score and have a great time saying 'Rubber'.  There's boy-girl, boy-teacher, girl-teacher, boy-girl-teacher, boy-west, boy-north and boy-east, get it?"

I'm laughing so much.  Cindi just needs a nom-de-plum and a stenographer.

"Okay, I added the bridge club thing," she brightly confessed.

"You're terrible!  Maybe we can make sell it to Fox TV."

"Fox-Europe, maybe.  Not here.  Anyway, here's another idea for that book you write in."

"My Writer's Notebook.  Fire away, Cindi Lu!"

"Brothers subconsciously want to get you pregnant; it's natural instinct to expand the clan.  I heard about this guy who gives his sister a sleeping pill every night so she won't know who's knocked her up.  She has orgasms, though, even asleep."

"Do you really believe that?" I challenged.  "The way I heard it, she puts vitamins in the pill jar and just pretends to sleep, as best she can anyway, while she bounces him all over the mattress.  He doesn't know that she's on birth control, so he just keeps trying.  Or maybe he knows that she knows but won't let him if she has to open her eyes.  Make sense?"

"Too much like a book, that way," Cindi ruled.  "I've had orgasms in my sleep, really good ones."

"Spare me the details.  Anybody give you a nice cocoa just before?"

"Naah.  Just went to bed horny."

"We're just made that way, right?" 

"Teach him to do you with his tongue."  Cindi had her eyes shut.  "A brother will stick with you all the way up and all the way down.  It's about caring.  He hooks his elbows around your hips.  Plus, a guy gets better in bed when he realizes it's not just a dick thing."

My though on that would be, what would he want in return?

And with her pert little smirk, "Plus you can still date around because, of course, you'll never marry each other."  She fluttered her eyelashes.

But she wasn't done.  "He should buy those gimmick rubbers at a truck stop.  Like 'Tickle her Pink.'"

"Or how about 'With Vibration Ribs,'" I offered.

"There's the 'Super Capacity Retention Bulb,'" Cindi quoted.

"'Micron Thin, yet Steel Strong,' as I remember."  We were on a roll!

"'50 Percent Performance Improvement'.  As if!"

"How about the 'Stays Lubricated Throughout.'  In rainbow colors, even!"  I just made that one up, but by adding the little detail I tricked her.

"The 'Pressure Enhancing Form Fit.'  Sounds like your bra, Holly."

"'Flavored to her Taste.'  Oh darling, I crave a Strawberry Shortcake."

''Prolong Your Power!  Assure your Comfort!' as if it's for the guy!"

"Or, 'When Her Security Counts' for such an infrequent concern," I matched her.

"How do you know this stuff, Holly?"  Cindi knows that I've never ventured far from Wal-Mart.

"My friends in school had collections in their lockers.  Some really did have little ribs."

Why do we clutter our minds with this stuff?  Because it's so funny.  How'd we get on special rubbers, I wondered?  I should write down those rubber names in my Writer's Notebook.

That was about the funniest lunch hour I've ever spent.  We were late back to class, so the students were pleased too.

I do know that Cindi has a brother.  I've met him and he looks just like her.  The girl knows more weird stuff!

I must never lose my Writer's Notebook.  Never!

TROLLING

Ordinarily I wear sensible underwear, but as it happened, Friday morning my sensible stuff was in the hamper.  What I save for dates was clean since I hadn't been on a date in months.  Sometimes a single dad of one of my students will take me out and we spend the evening talking school, nothing related to underwear

It wasn't a conscious decision, but I just happened to grab the bra that rounds me out.  I got the thing at Sears, so it's not that expensive.  Looking back, though, I wonder if my Josh dreams and Cindi's suggestion didn't conspire in that day's attire.  I wore the same blouse as Monday.  Usually I'd not wear the same thing in a given week, but Cindi liked the second button.

At the end of fourth period I couldn't resist.  I undid the button and tugged my collar as Josh passed my desk.  Sure enough, he pretended to study the blackboard behind.

I couldn't help but teasing a tad, leaning to inquire about his homework.  I took a deliberate breath to expand.  He noticed, evidenced by his reddened face as I droned about the assignment.  Josh agreed, clearly not hearing a word.

I snuck a peek.  Whatever was behind his zipper jutted as before.  This was like zoological courting in a PBS documentary.  Had Josh realized his message, he'd have covered up.

"So you'll do the references like the worksheet?" with a smile as I sat back up.  Straightening up deprived him of the neck view, but displayed my own hardening.  Would it show?  In this bra, they poke out nicely.  I could see the bump on my left.  Would he notice?  I was afraid to check his gaze, but I'd not think he missed.  He wasn't walking away, for sure.

As there were others still in the room, though, this little game of you-show-me-yours had gone far enough.  I'm not a slut.

"Yes, Ms. Rennick," he choked.  He'd seen me, alright.

"Good.  See you Monday."  I tried to meet his eyes, but he still wasn't looking me in the face.  When I got up to erase the blackboard, I looked like I'd been swimming in the Arctic.  Fortunately, best I could tell, only Josh had seen.  I re-buttoned and thought grammatical rules.

That night I dreamt again.  No problem getting his pants down this time.  I was moaning and about to come for what seemed forever.  I woke up wet and rubbed furiously.  This orgasm just kicked in and lasted.

CINDI'S GUIDANCE

Saturday, per usual, Cindi and I played tennis.  Our minds were working elsewhere, though.

"Josh's a little dreamboat," Cindi commenced.  "I watched him in Science around the World all week.  We're doing 'Chemistry in China', now.  They invented gunpowder before they had guns.  The Mings or Tangs or somebody like that.  So, what happened in class yesterday?"

"Why?"

"Because you wore the blouse I said."

She wanted to know how far out his bulge was, whether any of the other boys noticed my boobs, whether any girls saw his erection and which bra I'll wear Monday.

"My stitched one.  Thick and reinforced.  Total camouflage."

She tried to convince me to go braless.  It works if you're built like her, but a disaster for me.  And there is in fact a teacher's dress code.  I was going to wear what I usually wear.

"He's a sweet kid.  Have you thought about it?" she asked.

"About what?"

"About how to lay him, silly," in Cindi's pedantic tone.

"You mean have sex?"

"Look, you're dreaming about him.  They say when you dream about a dick twice you're going to get it.  Especially if the dream leads to necessary activity."  Cindi can be outrageous!  Who says that?  I never said anything about necessary; she just knows me pretty well.  It's for when you're stressed out.

"I'm almost old enough to be his mother."

"If you got pregnant at fourteen.  You're a teacher.  Teachers can sleep with students in France, you know.  It would be considered perfectly normal, like eating snails."  She laughed at the thought.  "Don't know about French mothers, but they swim topless."

"Cindi, you fibber, you've never even been to France."

"It's biologically normal.  It's how we all got started," the science teacher in her.  "Look, if you get called into the office you deny and I'll back you.  We were somewhere else.  And if they don't buy that, I'll expose the male teachers.  It's not fair you get fired while they get covered.  Plus, you can feign victimization.  Or say you are differently enabled."

We do special lesson plans for students with special needs, I agreed.

The "back you up" is the absolute truth.  Cindi would lie her pants off to cover my butt.  Shoot, she'd do more than that.  Friendship is about caring, even when it costs.  Being single, sometimes you want to just talk about even the weather.  Marrieds assume that we hang out with other twenty-somethings at clubs.  Like I'd go by myself?  We don't have that much support outside of work.  Cindi will feed me a crock if she can get away with it, but when push comes to shove, she's there with me.  And I'm there for her.

"He probably wouldn't even want to," I demurred.  "You can't make a guy."

STORIES

Cindi did research.  "I read about this teenager, still with her cherry.  This great-looking evil guy tricks her and ties her to this bed to rape her.  The title is 'The Four Poster'.  He takes pictures so he can blackmail her.  And while she really comes, but she can't show him because she said, no.  Says, 'Ow!' but thinks, 'Wow!' you know.  Not that I condone tying her up, especially a virgin."

"It's why women join the NRA," I explained.  "Pull out your handgun and waste him."

"That's an advantage of two big holsters," she nailed me.

"You're safe if I'm around," I assured her.

"So afterwards she escapes and ties him to the same bed, makes him take Viagra, and rapes him back!  She comes super, but won't let him.  Just almost, over and over.  He begs and begs, but nope!  She finally unties one hand for him to beat off.  She takes pictures because he's too goo-goo to notice.  So they each have something on the other.  The story ends with the idea that they'll keep tying each other to the four poster.  Rope him up, royally ride, accidentally loosen his hand and doze off."

"Cindi, you're a sex fiend trying to make me one, too!  That's pornography getting passed off as postmodern empowerment.  Give me a break!  Tying someone up is terrible!  You should read real literature where you have to use your imagination."  Great plot line, even so.  Good title, though.  My bed's just a regular one, so it wouldn't work.

"The story doesn't tell you everything."  Cindi was bit affronted at my criticism of something I'd not even skimmed.

And how can you climax without letting the guy come, too, I wondered?

She read my mind.  "Bondage stories deny the guy until the Mistress decides, so there's a way.  Make him do bizarre stuff first, like wear a used Kotex to a business meeting where he has to stand up in front.  Do you have a Bat Woman outfit, per chance?  Your leather bra would do, the one with rivets."

So we went round and round about outfits and didn't play tennis very well.  Cindi convinced me that my libido was completely wrapped up in Josh and that I wouldn't be freed until I gave in.

"It's about six inches long, has a head, Josh has one and you want it.  You know you do."

"A dollar bill.  Old as the hills, Cindi.  At least in my dreams."

"If we didn't dream about it, we'd lose our expertise, they say."  She does more than dream, of course, but in her mind, we deal with the same stuff.  I really love that girl!

"And Holly," in seriousness.  "A thirteen-year-old's sperm may be watery, but it only takes one little swimmer."

That night I dreamt about being chased by a little fish.

CINDI'S LITTLE FRIEND

By Monday, I'd thought more about thirteen-year-olds.  Skinny little wieners that wouldn't even touch the sides of my vagina.  Sara Happ-Stevens, MD discusses male bell curve in her "Working Woman" column, though she avoids explaining her interest in the lower tail.  Dr. Sara says we automatically contract.

"They don't know what we see from the front, do they?  He's fine," Cindi argued.  "It's why you noticed.  Maybe they think an old lady won't know what they're playing with all the time."

"Suppose not."

"The boys in front, anyway, you get to know their dicks.  Some teachers learn their faces too, they say," perfectly paced to make me laugh.

She waited, the went on.  "Could you tell that Martin had a hard-on in staff meeting last week?  He tried to face the board."  Martin Conway's our principal.

"Principals carry around large key rings," defending our supervisor.

"A long fat one?  Were you wearing anything special at that meeting, Holly?" in her breathy voice.

"Right!  My wet tee-shirt.  Give me a break!  Wasn't that the day you forgot your underwear, girl?"

"You've probably had other boys get stiffies," retuning me to Josh.  "But they weren't big enough.  Anyway, I know someone who can find out."

"Who?"

"A boy.  I think they have gym together so I'll ask what he sees in the shower."

"Ohmygod!  You can't ask another boy to do that!"

"Sure I can," pleased with herself.  "He's boy crazy, too, if you get my meaning.  Tells me everything and I keep secrets.  Students need a teacher that they can trust, right?  I'll tell him I know a girl who's interested in Josh Harrison."

Only Cindi could pull this one off!  How on earth would you ever discuss penises with a student?

"Well just don't mention my name."

Thursday afternoon, Cindi caught me.  "I spoke to my little buddy."

"The gay one?  And?"

"Josh has a big one, alright.  My buddy says, good luck."  I must have looked appalled.  "But, me being your guardian angel, didn't say which girl wanted to know," Cindy assured.

My eyes must have brightened.  "Tell him thanks."

"He owes me.  I leave my book closet unlocked during my off period.  Two rules: his friends don't know that I know, and I don't want sticky on my lab stuff.  Plus they need to learn safe sex."

"Everybody is getting laid except us!"  I frowned at the thought.  Then I smiled, imagining Josh's "a big one, alright".  I knew it from my dream.

The next day, Cindi slipped me a note.  "12: Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Argentina, Colombia, Malta, Netherlands, Panama, Philippines, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso.  13: Guyana, Korea, Nigeria, South Korea, Spain, Syria"

At lunch I asked what that's about.

"Age of consent.  The Dutch girls get to do everything.  You can buy dildos at the grocery store.  Where's Brukina Faso?"

"Island off Florida.  I take my Boy Scout troop there to earn a special merit badge."  You can fib when your knowledge is superior.

"Need an Assistant Den Mother?  I know the square knot.  Where is it really?"

"Africa, maybe."

I dreamt of Josh two more times that weekend, and had serious fantasies, even awake, about being screwed silly.  I was a kid too.  My father couldn't stop us.  Cindi said if you dreamt two times and this was four!

The thing about Cindi is that sometimes her heart works faster than her brain.  She probably offered them her closet because she felt sorry for gays.  I don't believe in promoting homosexuality in the schools.  They should use the boy's bathroom, or whatever.

I was very pleased at the Josh news, although I knew that you couldn't always tell from locker room reports.  If you want accurate data you need to ask a girl, and there weren't any girls who'd seen Josh's.

FOUR TOPICS

Cindi and I talk about lots of things, our boobs being four of them.  All that week, erotic trivia kept creeping into our minds.  Monday's banter:

"I was the first girl in my class to wear a real bra," I reminisced.  "The boys were talking about me then, just like we're talking about them now.  I got a real cup when I was twelve and they were always trying to bump me in the hall.  It got old real fast, having to hug my three-ringer.  I let Ryan feel me where we stored our instruments, but that got out of hand when he told the other trumpet players, so I quit band.  I didn't need all that!"

If Cindi were a shrink, she'd point out that I still hug my briefcase.  Plus maybe I liked playing clarinet.

"Like at prom?  I wore a low cut and when I came downstairs Mom said, 'Oh, the senior class gets to see the Grand Canyon!'  Right in front of my date!  I could have died.  He knew all about my canyon, but for my mother to say it!"

Cindi had her story.  "That's terrible.  My brother used to tease about how flat I was.  He wasn't trying to be mean, but I still didn't like it.  So he told me that he had growth lotion 100-percent guaranteed.  I pretended to believe it, so he put some cold cream in a green jar, came up and had me take off my shirt.  I must have had twenty treatments.  He knew that I wasn't that dumb.  We were just having fun, not really doing anything.  Back then, I still had hope for improvement.

"Anyway, after then, I wasn't as shy about him maybe doing a little something if we were horsing around.  A few years later I offered to apply some 100-percent guaranteed growth lotion on him and we laughed at his trickery."

"So did you?"  I asked.

"Hey, I'm telling the story," but she flashed her eyes.  "Anyway, the worst was in ninth grade.  There were these boys who'd bug me about my falsies.  We were playing this game where you have to do a dare or take a forfeit, and they dared me to take my falsies off.  I said no way; it was just how they made my bra and they decided my forfeit was that they got to feel me.  When I started to skedaddle, they pinned me and they took turns.  Since I had not much under my nipples, my bra just slid up.

"I fought, but they just thought that made it more fun.  It did, sort of.  I didn't yell because I didn't want some old person to find us.  But not one of them said anything mean about me being small!  They acted like mine were cool.

"Then somebody said that they should get to goose me, too, for fighting back.  I got scared because I didn't know if goosing meant outside or inside.  And then Justin, who wasn't even especially my friend, said that that wasn't fair to add forfeits.  Maybe some of the others thought that way too, or maybe they just were nervous, but once he said it, they didn't goose me."

"That's how gang bangs start," I noted.  Boys-will-be-boys!  Yuck!

"The funny thing is," Cindi continued, "I ran home feeling happy.  They liked my little ones!  And it made me pretty curious about goosing.  So the next week I told Justin, thanks for making them stop.  He was nicer and he could goose me if he liked.  I had my best panties on because I thought he might lift up my skirt to do it.  He looked around and said, 'Maybe when we're alone.'  But he never tried to collect."

"My forfeit," she went on, "at least got me to chuck my padded bras.  The school wouldn't let girls with big tits go braless, but ones like mine didn't count."

She grinned her Cindi grin.

"I could play guys like puppets!  In Chemistry, the fastest guy would get the bench directly across from me.  I'll bet a lot of dicks got beat after watching me titrate.  Still wish they were B's, though."

I share some of mine.

"Be happy, Thimblina," I consoled.  "Seamed bras cost more than triangles like yours.  Ever set off the metal detector at the airport?  Security has to wand me.  They know way before they start."

"Pros and cons," she decided.  "Like having a little boyfriend.  If I hunch my shoulders together, they can see the real deals.  I have to loosen my strap before, though.  You can't tighten your strap in the classroom, so last period's the best."

I laughed, though I wasn't sure about the school bit.

"Bras just buy me a little future.  Your future is guaranteed," I sighed.  "At Kroger's."  I couldn't miss that one.  Most of the bag-boys having had her as a teacher adds some eros.  "Hi, Ms. Barton.  Let me push your cart."  They'll let her lift the loose items, one by one, out of the basket.  She probably put them there for such purpose.  "Come again, Ms. Barton."

Cindi rolled her shoulders and giggled, "Girls their age have bigger."

Our code for mine is "heavy weapons".  Hers are "Colt 45s", hand size and, in my estimation, aimed 45 degrees outward, 90 being straight ahead.  She insists that she's 60.  A math major was doing his geometry thesis using a big wooden protractor, she says.  I doubted that one; math majors lack the social skill for such research.  "They study cones in geometry," she insists.  "Spheres too," to be inclusive.

"Size doesn't correlate to breast feeding.  If we'd get pregnant together, we'll have a contest!  Okay?" Cindi suggested.

"During class," I accepted.  "Working mothers won a lawsuit about it.  We'll let the cute boys collect the data."

"Like Josh, right?  To be scientific, we'd want the same seed, probably the same day.  Anybody who works here come to mind?"

Get yourself pregnant for some milk production contest?  If I'd been fast enough to agree to a double date, I'd have beat her.  Neither Cindi nor I approve one bit of these high-schoolers who try to get impregnated.  Like it's so cool to push a stroller around the shopping center, the bimbos!  Think of the kid!

But I missed my chance about a double date.

A breast-related topic perked Cindi up.  "Ever play Thirty Seconds of Bliss?  Everybody draws a card and the highest boy and the lowest girl go into a closet.  Hi-Lo, get it?  Thirty seconds and you can't say no is the bliss part.  Everybody counts down and they open the door.  If the couple isn't more-or-less back together, it's pretty funny."

"It sound's like a derivative of Spin the Bottle," I noted.  "The way we played, though, you just had to kiss with the others watching.  If some smart-ass tried to French to show off, you could bite his tongue to show who's boss.  The girls would cheer and the other guys would snicker.  Women's Lib, but we didn't know it."

 "Well I played the real way and goosing can be outside or inside.  It depends on how much of the thirty seconds gets spent doing other stuff.  Tiny tits don't take much time, so we'd get further."

"Thirty seconds total?  You didn't get too far."

"Not in the closet.  My favorites were shy guys who'd never done anything.  They'd still be finding my strap and I'd have their zipper down.  I'd always get them back in before thirty, though, because they were my friends."  She sighed, "Being small wasn't a problem.  Schoolboys go for whatever.  When I cozy up now, though, I'm not sure he can even tell I'm home."

I had her here.  "You know Martin's motorcycle.  When it's sunny and I walk home, he sometimes pulls up and gives me a lift.  It's kosher because it's just the way you ride.  I don't want to fall off, do I?"

Cindi thought a moment, "No, you hold on tight, maybe about at his belt buckle.  It is interesting that he's going your way, him living more towards the river.  Tell him you subscribe to Premium."

The cycle sure elevates his cool principal image, I was thinking.  Why would he care about cable channels?

Cindi pined dramatically, "Well, that explains why gallant guys take Lady Holly, not wretch Cindi, on motorcycle adventures.  Do you get to go to that Hell's Angels convention in North Dakota?  They showed the girls riding around topless on TV, but fuzzed their nipples."

"Seen my snake tattoo?"

It's not just boys that like to talk about boobs.

TEACHER TARTS

Coffee time on Tuesday, Cindi had a Cindi thought, a thought sufficiently astray to slow your knitting speed.  We'd taken up the craft only recently.  I was yet on a Swedish pullover, the bulky style where size is vague.  Cindi was on her third cardigan, as the first two didn't fit.

"Ever get a lift from a cowboy trucker with a little bedroom behind the cab on his eighteen-wheeler?  Decorated with pinups."  Pregnant pause and an only-Cindy grin, "Me neither."  She lifted her imaginary CB.  In her attempt at Texan, "This is Highway Trapper, good buddies.  Caught me a little northern fox.  Should have a nice pelt.  Honk when you pass Claymore Pull-off.  I'll leave my top lights blinking.  10-4."  Another short story right there.  I wonder if any of those numbers mean sexual stuff?

So I contributed a detail about this Highway Trapper guy.  "But your eighteen-wheeler dream boy will pull into a Truck World and say 'Wait here, honeybun.  I'm going to the john to get a little something.  Got a dollar?'"

Cindi couldn't even hold her coffee, she thought it was so funny."

Then the rat leaned over, two A cups worth, rested her hand on my knee, looked me in the eye and cooed, "Holly, after all this Highway Trapper, I really need a quick shower.  We know each other really well, so it's not like we don't like boys, too," nodding knowingly.  "We'll pick up some wine coolers and I'll suds your back for a starts."

I turned beet red.  Not in a million years!  I've only seen her naked in the pool shower.

She left me appalled for the longest time and then lost it, about falling off her chair in mirth.  "I totally got you, didn't I?"

As we parted, Cindi reached over and squeezed my crotch.  Not a lesbian thing at all, more of a salute.  "Think Josh and have a great one."

Did anybody see?

Looking back, I should have drawn her hand up further and responded, "Cindi, your itsie-bitsies are so precious.  I'll soap them how you like it best.  We could pick up "Sorority Sisters" to watch first.  You'd love how the suds scene leads to pledge initiation.  You know how fraternities have a big wooden paddle?"

Nothing beats outdoing someone who's trying to pull one on you.  Of course, I was too astonished right then to respond in kind.

"Sorority Sisters" is lame.  The bimbos have exactly the same silicone and totally shave.  Why would they all use the same red sofa?  Plus sororities, being racist, wouldn't have a Black, an Oriental, a Native American, an Hispanic and a geek girl who webmasters their greekcollegechicks.com.  They seduce their professors at "State U."  Nobody calls her college that!  A 1-900 number: "Hi, big guy.  I'm Tami.  Wanna hear how I got Homecoming Queen?"

Cindi says that we could do a web site, even if we didn't make the movie because they won't go to court.

"We talk like a couple of tarts," I admonished.

"We're teacher tarts!"

I thought about breasts on the way back to class.  In the mirror, mine look big and soft, round and smooth.  Would Josh like me bare-chested?  Like any decent woman, undressed I feel exposed.  Maybe he shouldn't see me totally naked.

A moment later, the enormity of "all the way" hit me!  This was not about breasts.  It was about intercourse, even if I'd admitted it only in my dreams.  Cindi knew it before I did!

Should I?  I'd be his first.  Would him a virgin make it wrong?  I've never screwed one except for Steve and that hardly was sex.  Could I even get into Josh's pants?  The questions themselves aroused me, hormonal confirmation to the affirmative.

I realized the common answer: think possibilities, not limits.  I would fuck year-old Josh Harrison, thirteen years old!

JUST IN CASE

I refilled my pill prescription.  Cindi doesn't use the pill because she doesn't like messing with her chemistry.  Same reason she doesn't do drugs, other than we do a little marijuana on special occasions.  Grass is organic.

Being off birth control, she has to be vigilant.  She had an abortion in college.  It still makes her cry.  Her so-called "boyfriend" didn't even go in with her!  She goes to church and I basically don't, but we're together on this: no matter how small, a baby is precious.  Her guys wear condoms.  But I didn't want that distraction for Josh's first.  Plus, he didn't wear one in my dreams.

On Wednesday, I cornered Josh to ask about the assignment.  The drop-dead date for the draft was Friday.  He tried to weasel an extension.

"Can't do that, but I could give you some pointers to move it along.  You'll need to show me what you've got."  I was just teasing myself with that last bit, I admit.  He was thinking that it was his writing.

"Uh, thanks, sure, I guess."  He didn't seem unhappy with the offer.  Maybe he'd see more boob.

"Tomorrow?"

"Second lunch?"

"Doesn't work.  I'll see you and your assignment here after school.  Don't be late."

Thursday morning I took extra care with my hair.  I wore what I consider an attractive black dress, zipper in the back, a low-for-school neck.  I added a sweater for cover.  Nice little white undies.

It wasn't the right time of the month to start my pills, but I still had my diaphragm from college.  Looked okay.  I got fitted when I was a freshman because I thought a coed might need one a lot.  Not exactly.  I didn't have the gel, but could go without.

Over my Cornflakes, doubt descended.  It wasn't as if I'd forgotten how to do it.  But what if I got some sort of paralysis and jelly-fished?  Maybe I should wait a few days, lose a little weight.

Then I heard Cindi's voice and she wasn't even there!  She said I'd do great, that I'd get to places I'd never been before.  Remember every little detail.  Don't let your best friend down, Holly.

I returned to my room to look at my bed.  Visualization, the age-old motivational technique.

The visible Cindi, of course, noticed my dress and waved in the hall.  She beamed, wiggled her shoulders and mouthed, "Hook's baited."  Nobody around us would have understood.  Nobody else would have caught my blush.

Perhaps I was a bit distracted.  In first period I misplaced my notes on "Mexican-American (a.k.a. Chicana/o) Literature" but I know enough off the top of my head.  Afro-American literature has a solid foundation because it matured under systemic adversity.  Think Richard Wright.  Mexican-American literature, on the other hand, lacks some of that depth.  The characters are Hispanic because they call each other things like "vato".  The stuff is written in English but they use "abuela" as if "grandmother" slipped the author's mind.  Of course I don't say this in class.

I presented the same material in second period, but by then I actually had it pretty well organized.

It was a long day, and by third period I did perspire, but the fan helped.  I unbuttoned my sweater at one point, but there was too much showing so I had to button back up.  I looked like one of those wenches on the covers of bodice-ripper books.  If Martin Conway saw me he'd either send me home or ask me to stop by his office to discuss lesson plans.  "Ms. Rennick, could you please lean over here so we can read this file together?"  Not really.  I like Martin as a supervisor.  He respects me as a teacher and is just being friendly when he gives me a lift.

MARTIN

Cindi thinks Martin has such a fine butt, but she appraises guys by appearance.  She says that he slept with a teacher at last year's State NEA, but won't say whom.

"They ran into each other in the elevator after the banquet and got to talking.  They went up to his room to watch HBO because neither of them has Premium at home.  It was the James Bond one where he's captured on a submarine and the captain, this bitch who dresses like a fish, interrogates him.  Ever see it?  He's a charmer in his tux.  After you-know-what, he escapes in a torpedo."

She doesn't read and then she watches such crud!  Like a captain would dress like a fish?

"Martin and this teacher sat in the hotel room chairs for a while.  Then Martin went down the hall for some 7-Up.  When he got back, this teacher was sitting on the bed and Martin sat beside her to drink his pop.  When he reached for the TV Guide, he brushed her back.  Then she knew he was okay with her being there.  They just lay back and undid each other.  She was wearing a black bra and pantyhose.  Guys like black, but the pantyhose was a pain to get off.  How was she to know they'd meet in the elevator?  They talked more than they screwed.  He was really gentle."

"She could have worn a fish outfit to the banquet," I suggested.  I never run into anybody in a hotel elevator.  Maybe she was just riding up and down looking for a friendly face.

"It got athletic next morning in the shower and they ended up back in bed, soaking wet and didn't get to the conference until the workshops.  They'll watch TV again at this year's NEA.  She can save a night's room rate, $80, and still get per diem from District.  It's legal.  She'll make something to nibble on, a veggie plate where you make little swans with the radishes, maybe.  They don't date, though with all his evening meetings, it would be easy."

Leave the guy alone, Cindi, I thought.  I know it's you and he's married.  I didn't say it though, because if she'd wanted my opinion, she'd have said she was the teacher.  Anyway, I'm not going to weigh in on a once-a year get-togethers.

Until the veggie plate, I thought it was Jessica Thomas, but she's not in NEA.  Coaches have some other organization, probably more inspiring.  A homemade snack is so Cindi, peeling each little radish, thinking about getting laid.

I figured out why Cindi wants me to tell Martin that I have Premium.  He'd know that I know something about NEA and what?  It's hard to follow a Cindi scheme sometimes, but it usually ends up under the sheets.

Son what did she do here?  She told me that Martin's good in bed and that this other teacher's temporarily out of the picture.  What didn't she do?  She didn't let on that she was the one so I wouldn't feel I was moving into her territory.  The girl's so selfless!  If I got the affair going, she'd bug out of next year's NEA rendezvous, even.

I don't approve of intimacy in professional relationships.  I have, however, paid more attention to Martin's trousers.

HOOKING HIM

And here I was at school in this outfit!  Maybe instead, I should get Martin's feedback about attire.  He's super in the sheets.  Just kidding.

In fourth-period I deliberately avoided calling on Josh, though he looked my way a lot.  My ass in that dress probably got to more cocks than his.  It's not that I have a thing about my derrière, but I know that boys like to gawk from behind.

For lunch I ate an apple at my desk.  Cindi stuck her head in.  "Found these in my pocket," slipping me a zip-lock of foil-wrapped packets.  She didn't want me pregnant, but probably more so, didn't want me to have a last-minute excuse to let myself down.  I'm sure they weren't just "in her pocket".

"Ribbed?" as I covered the items in the bottom of my purse.  When you're already nervous, it's easier to wisecrack than to just say thanks.

"Just good ones.  Bye."  She kissed the air.

Fifth period Thursday I have free, but I didn't want to go the teacher's lounge dressed as I was.  I graded.  Pretty bad essays, so my feedback wasn't much more than code like "Subj-Verb Agr".  I wasn't actually thinking about content, so maybe I graded a bit high.

Sixth period was basically diagramming sentences.  They complain and end up better writers.  As I really didn't want to be facing the board, I teamed up the students.  I'd read a sentence; they'd discuss and bark their answer.  Competition helps them be decisive.  If they're wrong, they at least find out.  I don't need to point out an error; the competition will.

I was getting tingly under my desktop.

And after seventh period (diagramming again), the last student gone, I was alone and there was Josh, the door latching behind him, thanks to the Fire Marshal.

I'd thought about my book closet.  Get on the stool for something on the top shelf and Josh could steady me.  With his arms all the way around, I'd get brushed.  Then what?  It's too risky at school for a novice seducer.  I'm no Cindi.

"Sit down, Josh.  I'll be right there."

I smiled, swallowed, wiped my brow and casually took off the sweater.  Starting is hard.  "It's a bit warm, don't you think?  They always turn off the air conditioner when school lets out," I offered, bending over his assignment.  I'd practiced every bit.

His eyes bugged as he ogled my eyeful of décolletage.  I wondered if he smelled the musk.  Without the sweater, my boobs advertised themselves, but I pulled my shoulders back to help.  I couldn't decipher the expression on his face without staring and I didn't want to do that.

Cindi's little gay friend, whoever he was, was right.  I'd been inspecting other boys, and Josh's arousal was again very distinct, the third time I'd seen it so.

And I couldn't do anything because we were in a classroom and there were others in the building.

My mind plays games, though.  I'd fanaticized him at his desk, me leaning from behind, bosom on his shoulder, steadying myself with my hand on his thigh as I corrected his spelling.  His free hand would slide up my calf, his fingers now to my underwear, my hand on his zipper, pulling the tab, grasping his gigantic penis, him tipping me back on my desktop.  Get real, girl!  He'd have run out the door and Security would be mobilized.

I cleared my throat (there seemed to be something in it) and addressed Josh, teacher to student, not touching, not sending smoldering glances (as if he sees them, the shy kid) and went over the assignment for ten minutes.  Then another ten minutes, as I still heard voices in the hall.  I wanted nobody to see us leave together.  I offered him a ride home and he accepted.  I'd no back-up had he declined.

"You know, I've got a lit book that might help at my house.  We'll swing by and get it on the way," another rehearsed one.  My voice sounded distant and funny, someone else talking.

"Sure."

Here we go!  My heart pitter-pattered my rib cage as we drove, him far to my right, toward my bed.

REELING HIM IN

We drove mostly in silence and pulled into the garage.  I closed the door with the remote control so no one could see us get out.  Exiting, the back of his shirt pulled up enough to reveal an inch of his back.  It was as if I were stealing a view of him dancing.

I'd a perfectly good excuse for us dropping in.  I really did have a book.  He really was my student.  And yes, I had probably broken a District rule, but they were there to keep the male faculty off the girls.

I imagined the inquisition if District found out.  "Which book?  Why didn't you have it at school if it's something they need?"

Entering the side door, I ditched the sweater and slipped off my shoes.  "Mind taking off yours, too?  I just mopped.  Want something to drink?"

We walked to the fridge where I got him a soda.  "Popcorn?  I'm kind of hungry myself."  Turning, I gave his arm a little brush, not much.  Leaning toward him to get the contact seemed a little awkward, but so what?  He paused a moment, perhaps pleased with the proximity.

While I microwaved a bag, the Lite kind, I showed him my collection of refrigerator magnets, especially National Parks.  I told him how at Grand Canyon you can see 3,000,000 years of geology.  I've no idea about the 3,000,000, actually, but the Ranger gave an informative lecture.  Josh wouldn't be that concerned with the exact number.

Over the breakfast table we made idle chitchat.  My neckline opened just the right amount.  He could stare all he wanted in my kitchen.  I tried to relax him a bit with an account of riding a sled that got turned around backwards.  Telling it relaxed me a bit too.

"If you're not in a hurry, take a look at the book while I go change.  I really need to get out of this tight dress."  Boy, did we know about the fit!

Time for him to be more than just a spectator, I thought in my room, pulling the outfit over my head.  I felt good about not freezing up.  I pulled the dress back down and deliberately jammed the zipper, which was not easy, believe me; it took about five tries.  I returned to the kitchen.

"This zipper's stuck.  Think you can get it free?"

I felt his awkward hands, those of a boy beginning to be a man, on my shoulder and the back of my neck while he worked on the mechanism.  When the zipper finally came loose, he went ahead and pulled it all the way down.  I'd have lacked the nerve to have asked him to.  Perhaps the carefree attitude I was endeavoring to project led him to complete the unzip.

He could see my bra strap and maybe panty top.  It's said that the small of a woman's back is her most-erogenous zone.  I've never believed it, but was hoping.  I wished I'd gone ahead and worn my undies with little bunnies.

I pulled at the dress a little, exposing more shoulder, and thanked him, complimenting him on his strong hands, hooey of course, but what boys like to hear.  I hoped he was taking full study.  I couldn't see his face, so I turned around, clutching the front to myself in what I thought to be a false-modest way.  (I may have seen this in a movie.)  He looked a bit surprised, but looked back for one long glorious moment.

"You're welcome."

"Be right back."  I turned and made my exit (what was that movie?), knowing that he was looking at my skin.  And getting hard again, I hoped.  I grabbed my purse on the way out.

I'd seen a look that said that he saw a woman, not a teacher.  That look was more significant than his boner.  I shakily inserted my diaphragm.  I put Cindi's little bag on my dresser where I could see it.  I didn't need the contents, just the encouragement.

I changed into loose shorts and a blouse sheer enough to show bra.  Subtlety makes things work.  Slutty girls don't know this.  You could sure see my nips now, but I plucked them anyway.  The top two buttons I left open, the first because it was supposed to be and the second because it wasn't supposed to be.

I looked at myself in the mirror - rounded curves, pert nose.  A girl should compliment herself now and then.  A virgin's out there.  I want him.  I know exactly how much because Cindi told me.

I set my glasses on my dresser.  Once a guy broke my glasses while pulling up my sweater.  Learn from experience.

SPILT MILK

I walked back into the kitchen.  The undone buttons worked as expected, but I sashayed a bit to make sure.  I poured myself a glass of milk and as I turned around, I tripped my step and sloshed him.  Yes, it was deliberate.  But it felt so natural it seemed like an accident, even to me.

"Ohmygod, I'm sorry!" covering my mouth in mock horror.  "Don't move."

I grabbed paper towels.  "Here, let me get that spot."  When I reached around to dab his far shoulder, my breast found his near arm.  I'm not sure if there was any milk on his far shoulder or not.  Bra bound, as I was, I knew I felt firm.

I'd like to have wiped his trousers.  Cindi says I should have, acting astonished at what I came upon.  According to Ms. Big-Talk, once you've grabbed it, it's yours.  I was more cautious, however, about a thirteen-year-old's.  Mopping his far side, I worked back and forth on his biceps, steady and slowly.  To my chagrin, he fell into counter rhythm, perhaps thinking he was sneaking a feel.

"You getting it?" he wondered.

A bicep parked in my valley while I vaguely wiped his ribs. 

"Can't send you home like this.  Your mother would kill you.  We'll throw this stuff into the machine real fast?  Won't take any time."

"Doesn't matter.  I'm just supposed to hang out and do my homework."

My move got him back up the crest. 

"Good."  This was better than good, actually.  "We got your assignment together after school, didn't we?"  Down the slope again.  I pushed back enough to squish my boob outward.

Figuring that I had him interested, I reluctantly disengaged.  "Just go in there," indicating the bathroom, "and hand me your stuff through the door.  I'll find you a robe or something."

I'm guessing that my breast disarmed any objection he might have had.  A minute later he cracked the door and thrust out his shirt and trousers.

"Your underpants got wet, too.  I'll throw them in."  I was a bit shameless.

"'S-okay."

"I've seen underwear before, for Heaven's sake.  No big deal."

He reluctantly surrendered checkered boxers.  Except for his socks, I had a nude boy in my bathroom!

Now what?  Insist on a bath?  "Here, let me wash down there.  Why, Josh, you're a man!  How wonderful!  Here, I'll get in with you."  Another Cindi-type scheme, no thanks, though in retrospect it might have worked.  Naked, he'd be defenseless against a soapy washcloth.

Well, I had to wash his clothes.  I started the presoak and got out the laundry powder.  Josh wasn't going anywhere in just his socks.

Ryan's pajama bottoms, light blue, were the only option.  Quite past tense, I'm afraid.  The top was there too, but he didn't need that, now did he?  Actually, I was still whining to Cindi about Ryan who does educational assessment.  Nice guy, decent looking.  Fondness for the familiar, PJs for an overnighter, for example.  He'd always fold his pants over the chair.  Breast attention, condom, him superior, maybe twelve strokes.  I always came.  Cindi liked him too, but never slept with him, a true test of sisterly loyalty, since she could have in a minute.  Then Ryan met a textbook rep and got engaged.  I still see him at work occasionally.  Story of my life.

"Here you go.  Can't find the shirt."

"'S-okay," from behind the door.

Cindi says get the guy into panties.  They're all you got, you say.  To his mortification, silkiness is arousing.  Casually comment that cross-dressing is getting to be pretty popular these days for straights.  But I couldn't do that!

"Come on out.  Let's have some tea while the clothes are washing.  You don't need a top.  What flavor you like.  Orange Blackberry?"

SOFA

I steered him to the living room couch.  I left to start the tea, then came back and sat beside him, trapping him against the sofa arm.  Learned it from getting trapped myself in my younger days.

"So, tell me about yourself, Josh.  Got hobbies?"

"Not really."  It was like pulling teeth to get him to talk, all bare-chested as he was.  "You know, I think you're the best teacher in the school.  I really like your class," glancing at my buttons.

"Why, thank you, Josh.  And I enjoy having you as a student," leaning toward him, I hoped fetchingly.

"I'm not the best student, I know."

"The best student isn't the one who gets the highest grades.  It's the student who learns the most."  My knee now touched his thigh.

"I'd take English even if I didn't have to."

"I know you would."  At least, for the pleasure of ogling me.  "I know you've been late with assignments because you want them to be good," shifting my thigh to match his.

"I don't want to disappoint you."  Oh Josh, I don't want you to disappoint me either!

"You're a very promising young man, Josh.  Know what you want to be when you grow up?"  Boy, there's a question.

"I don't know.  A lot of different things, you know.  What Dad does is interesting; he's a software engineer."  He bit his lower lip awkwardly and lifted his gaze from my chest to look me in the face for a few seconds.

"You're a nice strong boy, Josh.  Look at those muscles."  I gave him a playful squeeze.  "You play sports?"  I let my grip dwindle into touch.

"A little baseball but I'm not on the team."  I'd hoped that he'd say he was a wrestler and could show me some pins.  I'll bet slut Jessica Thomas sees his jock strap when they do tumbling.  PE must be fun to teach.  I didn't like the idea of Jessica teaching Josh, though.

Even with his knees together, his penis bulged the pajama fabric.  Girls look for showable fabric in blouses.  Silk's absolutely the best.  Josh's fabric would slide, just a bit now and then, and that helped.  That's how I judged he was circumcised.  A ridge.

We chatted inconsequentially and I patted his arm before I had to restart the washing machine.  When I brought in our tea, he'd shifted position so that I couldn't see his crotch as well.

"I'll try not to spill anything this time," I promised.

We made more small talk, me doing about 90 percent, and drank the tea.  I found out that he was pretty good in math, liked movies (Star Wars and that sort of thing) and had once collected bugs.  He kept sneaking little peeks at my legs, crossed and uncrossed for his benefit.

Time to try something, I told myself.  Behind me was a comforter I'd crocheted last winter.  "Aren't you cold?  I am."  No wait for an answer.  "Here," tossing the cover over his chest and snuggling in.  His arm nuzzled my side, then slipped over my breast, just like at the fridge, a good sign.  It slipped back, pausing as before on the jewel.  A very good sign!

"Warmer?"  My right hand casually slipped behind his elbow and found his knee.  I tugged the pajamas a little.  "These okay?"  A nod.  "They're not too tight or anything?  You must be a runner."  My palm moved to the inside and began to trace a figure eight.  Oh, kiddo!

Under the comforter, the out-of-sight aspect loosens some inhibitions, at least for me.  I'd probably not be rubbing that part of him otherwise.

I recollected being under a blanket once at a football game, more fun because the people around couldn't tell that we got my bra off.  I mean totally off.

VIRGIN CINDI

Cindi lost her virginity under a beach blanket.  The way she jabbers about guys sometimes, I'm surprised she ever was one.  It was on some sort of Catholic youth outing, but it wasn't a Father or anything.  That's totally terrible, what's in the papers!  Cindi says that if the priest messes with any St. Bernadette altar boys, she'll perform a sacrament to guarantee that he'll honor his vows forevermore.  Her description included a more explicit "cut the fucker's dick off", but you need to tone things down in the reporting.  At least a Father with girls is natural.

Cindi had a nun teacher who had a side job as a call girl!  Didn't even need the money because she had this vow of poverty.  The police gave her this special license because the chief went to that church.  All the kids in Cindi's school knew about it, even how much she charged.  It cost more if she wore her black habit.  One of the boys saw her in disguise when his folks were driving him to karate lessons.  I wonder how much of that story is true?  I'm absolutely nonsexist: Fathers shouldn't and nuns shouldn't because that's part of their deal.

Cindi at fourteen had this wide-eyed longing to make love (her term, not mine).  She decided that the youth outing was an opportune time to move forward.  She chose her partner, inexperienced as her, on the bus.  All the kids knew exactly who the virgins were, both sexes.  Most who weren't had traded theirs with someone on that same bus.  I think that's good, being of the same religion.

She started him lotioning her as soon as they found a spot away from the sponsors.  Hormones led from there.  He never hesitated until right at the last when he was afraid about a baby.  Quick-thinking Cindi told him that she was on the rhythm method.  She didn't even know how it worked, but he knew even less, only that it was approved.  She had a tiny climax, so she thought at the time, anyway.  She realized afterwards that the "love" part wasn't essential.  It was just neat!  I wonder sometimes if all this attention to "the Virgin" doesn't just make Catholic kids focus on how to lose theirs?  Some of Cindi's friends could tell when the two were doing it and bought her a snow cone afterwards.

ERIK

I think of Erik.  Erik was a year behind me.  We'd played together lots as kids.  We'd even peed together.  Long after my girlfriends subscribed to Seventeen, Erik and I would bike from the Outcrop (this muddy, brambled hill ascendible by only the valiant) straight to Hello Ice Cream and split a sundae.  Another day we might play with my dolls.  I never told the other kids about that.  One summer we won the Twelve-and-Under Doubles tennis championship.

Liking each other for better reasons, making out came easy.  We'd bonked each other for years with birthday balloons, rolled up Mad Magazines and other non-lethal weapons.  Then once while walloping one another over whether you collect Monopoly rent if you're still in Jail (you don't), he kissed me.  We were both surprised and got right back to buying properties.  I bankrupted him because I owned Park Place.  Then we chased each other to his tree house where we taught ourselves kissing the right way.  I was fourteen and probably six inches the taller, so I'd sort of scooch down.  I guess we were standing up because it seemed safer.

Everyone remembers something similar.  But for me, it was something more.  It was, for all practical purposes, my first male kiss.  It was from someone who liked me for being me, for whom I had value.  The kiss ratified it.  Dad had made me a slut, but I could be a good person with Erik.

A tree house is a good place to kiss, up above the world.  We, of course, came to sit, and then because it worked better, stretch out.  We wouldn't just smooch willy-nilly.  One of us would try something and the other would tell if they liked it.  Then we'd try it in reverse.  We bumped teeth a few times.  On the other hand, flipping our tongues was pretty erotic, but we hardly knew anything.

If I were wearing a dress, he'd be first up and last down so he couldn't see my panties.  Of course, he'd seen me in my underwear a thousand times because we'd stop by my room when we'd get out of school.  That was different because we weren't kissing.

FOOT RUBS

Back to Josh, the present, not the past.

Lacking even the flimsy excuse of spilt milk, his arm slid my over my blouse.  His eyes seemed focused on the wall.  My hand traced a bigger figure eight, the side of my palm inching higher and higher.

I anticipated him undoing my top.  It would all be under the comforter.  I'd have to acknowledge him, though, perhaps with a kiss.  With our mouths engaged, he'd strip me under the crocheted propriety.

But despite (or maybe because of) my hand creeping up his pajamas, he leaned away.

Don't force things, I told myself.  Give him a choice.

"Teaching's so hard on my feet.  Mind giving them a rub?"  An old chestnut.

"Okay," with a bit of blush.

The foot rub brings to mind a great getaway.  Neither Cindi nor I had plans for last Thanksgiving.  She saw this ad about flying to Las Vegas and staying in Caesar's Palace.  There were cheaper places, but the package was so good that you'd not want to skimp.  A phone in the bathroom, even if you'd never use it!  The Strip's totally fabulous and totally idiotic.  We got great meals, turkey, of course, for not much and traipsed from one Wonder of the World to another.  The visitors are more interesting than the waterfalls.  And the shows!  No reason to pay $39 for some has-been when the lounges have the up-and-comers for the price of a margarita.  We thought we hated country music until we saw it.  The music's about getting through life, not being disillusioned with it.  The performers know who's at the tables.

"Where y'all from?"

"Tallahassee," the table next to us.

"Tallahassee!  We got stuck at the Motel 6 when our transmission went out, you know.  Stewart here on pedal and the service manager got to talking.  Turned out to both be Baptists, you know.  They invited us to their potluck and we set up and played sacred songs, plus a few requests.  What a blessed evening that was!"

Then you start chatting to folks at that table because you've been to Tallahassee, too.  They think that teaching mid school must be so hard with all the gangs and things.  Cindi bought a CD from Stewart between sets.  Why do they wear their hats inside?  We don't allow it at Capton Springs except for Sikh kids.  It was the favorite thing we did in Vegas, going to that show.

The only thing we really needed to pay for was the Liberace Museum, ridiculous on one hand and good for hours of discussion on the other.  Elvis and Dolly Parton were free, handing out coupons for $0.99 shrimp cocktails.  Cindi took my picture with the King.  Dolly had me beat by a mile.  Gambling we limited to the quarters we could bring.  I just brought what I could legitimately garner.  Cindi, of course, bought some rolls at the bank, but it still wasn't much, considering.  Cindi said that we might meet great guys, but the ones we saw were losers.  "Didn't I see you in one of the shows?" that sort of pickup.  "Probably, I'm security" usually got rid of them.  Hell, we didn't need boyfriends.  At the pool we gave each other great foot rubs.  There's so much more to life.

But back to Josh, my place, my intended seduction.

I tossed the cover out of reach and took off my socks.  "Take yours off so I can foot rub too."  I liked the mutual thought of us both taking things off.

I flopped back on the sofa, my feet thrust against his thigh.  Two things accomplished, one being his view up my shorts.  Fredrick's of Hollywood is appalling.  A guy would want to find you wearing crotchless panties, if they even really sell such things?  Would I want to see some turkey standing in the bank queue with his dick hanging out?  Give me a break!  White cotton is what we want.

Josh's stare up my shorts was hardly furtive when I rolled my knees to open the cuffs.  Acting like he needed to better inspect my toes, he dropped his head for a northern look.  I pointedly looked away.  He's just thirteen.  The crotch of a swimsuit shows more.  I hope nothing snuck below my panty hem, but if a few strays did, I couldn't fix it now.  I'm sure he'd seen his mom's.

Two, even as Josh reached for my toes, I raised my right heel onto his thigh.  Had his penis angled toward my side, I'd have scored a bulls-eye.  As it was, I could just feel his root.

Josh didn't stop me.  Rather, his fingers enumerated my toes and then, more and more firmly, massaged the soles of my feet.  It felt erotic to be sure, but also just warm and relaxing.

When he started on the insides of my ankles, without even planning, I shoved my feet fully across his lap, my heel up and onto the taut ridge.  As he still didn't pull back, I expect he doubted I knew what I'd mounted.  Fat chance.

It was easier for him to not acknowledge my foot.  The deeper such a dilemma for him, the better for me.

"It feels nice, Josh."  My foot rub, we'll say.

He was unyieldingly hard, according to my right foot, anyway.  When he moved even a little, I could better sense how aroused he'd become.  We're talking rock here!  My goal, though, was more than just erectile confirmation by foot feel.

The first foot feel can be fonder than fifty ferocious fucks.  If I used that illustration in class, every student would forever remember what's alliteration.  In science, they don't use the term, apparently, so Cindi missed the point.  I had to explain that it's not the fifty times.

I was gaining confidence in my ability to lead.  I wasn't that sure about each step, just tactics.  Watch for feedback.  Don't presume his initiative.  Gently expand his boundaries.  Like a well-designed language unit, a well-executed seduction requires educational psychology: make them want to learn before instructing.  Too bad they make Ed Psych so boring.

I slipped my foot along him pretty blatantly, wanting him to know the answer.

"Is there more tea?" Josh managed.  Getting toe-felt distracted him, I guess.  Maybe he feared my knowing was something bad.  Good boys (which he is) shouldn't get hard-ons for their teacher.

No home run, but not bad for an amateur.  We'd both have called this a good day already.

BACKRUBS

I toyed with the idea of putting my head on his lap.  He could massage my forehead for my supposed headache.  I'd have liked nestling my cheek you-know-where.

I envisioned a Cindi-style climb over him to get something from the end table, a body-entwining possibility, but I didn't see anything to reach for.  I did think the scenario through, though: "Oh, Josh, I'm sorry.  I just slipped.  What's this?  Is it you?  It's so big!  It's my fault, isn't it?  It must
be so uncomfortably cramped.  Here, let me," Cindi-style.

Get him involved, I thought a bit more strategically.

"You know, I get a bit of a backache from working."  Actually I do, from hauling these melons around.  "Would you rub my back?"  It's another classic and embarrassingly obvious gambit, but perhaps not for someone thirteen.

"Um, I don't know how."

"No problem.  I'll teach you.  Sit up with your back this way."  My foot came off him with a farewell salute and I sat up, slid behind his shoulder, and proceeded to knead his neck.  He really should go out for sports, I thought.

Reaching around to knead his chest, I maneuvered my breast above and then down his shoulder blade.  He crossed his legs for obvious reasons, missing my smile of accomplishment.

"Like it?" drawing myself back up.  "Massage is about pressure at the right places."  My hand on his bare chest held him proximate, but he would have leaned back on his own.

"Nice," he agreed.  My hand?  My breast?  Back down I went.

Josh and I must have exchanged some primal message, because he turned until both bosoms could slide.  My right hand cupped his pectorals, my left his abdomen, so I could guide.

My left fingers found his elastic of his pajamas and I lightly popped the waistband to announce my descent.  He gave me a little shake-off, nothing I couldn't have overridden, but something I'd respect.

"It does feel nice, doesn't it?  It gets even better if you lie down."

He looked at the sofa.

"No, not here, you're too tall.  How about the floor?  No.  Let's try the next room."

I led him into my bedroom, undoing another button on the way.  Cindi's zip-lock was right there.  Basically, so was Cindi.

"And you can just stretch out."  Where else in a bedroom can you stretch out?

HIS MASSAGE

Josh reclined as bidden and I started pounding his back with enough gusto to make him yelp, but then he got into it.  Not an hour ago, we'd been in my classroom.  Now here we were on my bed, an attractive woman (so I flatter myself) and a claimed youth, neither wearing very much.

As only moments before I'd had his cock in my toes, it might seem backwards that now I'd be drumming his spine.  But think about it.  The joy of sex isn't just the squeezing.  It's approaching multiple ways multiple times, protracting two minutes of service into thirty minutes of shivers.  Sluts don't know this.

I pounded him right down to his pajamad buttocks.  In massage, after you pound, you lightly rub, or so I told him anyway.  Nice big circles.  When at last I sensed his muscles loosen, I ran my palms up and down each cheek, nice and firmly, using my thumbs to spread his crack.  I didn't dwell over his anus, but I knew right where it was.  Well, maybe I spent a little extra time there, thumbs pulling.

"Like it?"

He didn't dare answer.

"Roll over," a bit commandingly.  "There's more."

I thought that Josh might resist for obvious reason.  If so, maybe I could get him on hands and knees and massage around his waist.  But resistance was waning.  Rolling to his back earned him my best smile.

I only needed a glimpse at his lumped PJs.  He knew I could tell and wasn't even protesting.

Kneeling beside, I started on his chest, with its utter lack of chest hair.  I brushed his nipples and congratulated myself on their immediate hardening.

Oh, how I kept glancing lower!

Josh was fixated where my three buttons were undone, leaving my bra not much covered.  Given where I was above him, he could hardly look elsewhere.

"You have to lean in to massage," I explained.  He didn't ask why the masseuse unbuttons.

Now straddling his near leg, I continued stroking his chest.

Then watching his face carefully, I brought my knee up to touch his scrotum.  A knee can't feel much, but testicles can feel a knee, I'm sure.

His eyes squinted shut.  He'd no escape except darkness.  He knew I'd already footed his cock.  He may have thought of it like a squirrel on a tree trunk -- if it doesn't run, it's invisible.  Being a kid can be confusing.

In the kitchen, on the sofa, I'd kept the banter going: school, sports, sleds, whatever.  Here on my bed, kneeing him, "So who's ahead in the NBA?" wouldn't work.  Better to cut the gab.

I palmed him yet lower, the flat of my hand now luxuriating his abdomen.  Now red-faced and breathing deeply, he involuntarily wiggled back, but at the same time, looked concerned.  Cindi says that I was lucky he didn't shoot right then and there; sometimes it only takes a little wiggle.

I could reach down to the tented proof, so vulnerable.  He couldn't have stopped me.

Oh, Lordy!

But I didn't want to masturbate the little fellow.

"Feel nice?"  I was pretty pleased with my leadership.

"Uh-huh," his tongue seemingly larger than his mouth.  I can always claim that I was asking about the massage and Josh can claim that he was too.

I tried to look nurse-like.  "Don't mind about that," acknowledging his erection.  "It happens when a healthy person gets a low massage -- a natural response."  I've never actually heard the term "low massage", but maybe this would be one.

Then I added Cindi's legal opinion.  "Anyway, what happens on the massage table is protected by law.  Like with a lawyer."  Probably what happens on a bed isn't.  Lawyers always screw you.

I don't know if he believed all of it, but he sort of had to.  I was on top.

"We'll just let it do what it wants," as if it could do otherwise.  Josh needed to see things from the "we" perspective.

"We'll be careful," as I ran my palm up the outside of his hip, across the top of his PJs and down the other side, pointedly raising my wrist in a you're-safe-with-me maneuver.  I did tug the fabric, though.

Cindi later made what I'll bet is a correct analysis.  Most guys, decent ones anyway, don't advertise their asset.  Codpieces didn't last.  But if you make the point that it's no special issue, the guys quit worrying about it.  Like it's not special to you, for real?

I could have bagged Josh then and there.  He couldn't have got his boner down before I'd have had it inside.  I suppose male teachers usually score at about this stage.  Get the schoolgirl warm and poke her when she's hot.  I'm not that way, or at least don't want to be.  Cindi said that two males at Capton Springs make it with students.  Robert Sasser has to be one.  He all but told Cindi that she'd like him in bed.  I told her to avoid any guy who thinks he's doing you a favor.  But a pubescent might succumb to the asshole.  The loser can't score with us, so he goes for girls who stay to get help with assignments.

I didn't want to lay Josh; I wanted him to lay me.  Cindi agrees that the two are different, but says it doesn't much matter once he's inside.  For me it did.

MY MASSAGE

"A special feeling, isn't it, getting messaged?  My turn."  Sitting would allow him to conceal his arousal and cool down.

"Mind if I take off this shirt?  It's hard to massage through," my excuse.  Josh's mind had been inside it forever.

"You don't have to."

"I'll be on my stomach."  Not for very long, I figured.  "Remember the rule about the table.  You can't tell that we took it off."

"Okay," all the acquiescence I needed.

I let him watch.  One-look girls in bras walk straight toward you.  Two-look girls in bras cross in front of you.  Same bra.  Same boobs.  The effect is just better from the side, according to Cindi.

Josh seemed unsure where to begin, hunched a bit forward to shield his pajamas.  So much for him cooling down.  He didn't have "getting massaged" excuse.

"My shoulder blades."  Safe for young hands.  He began to rub and I began to tingle.

"Work down."  He lifted my bra strap to rub beneath, a sweet touch.

"Okay, Ms. Rennick?"

"Call me Holly.  I really should be just in a sheet," I suggested.  On my stomach nude and letting him work the sheet off me, I didn't add.

But I answered myself, "Maybe after you have more practice."  I left the future to his imagination.

"Didn't I show you how to do it?" when he stated back up.

As I'd done to him, he thumbed up and down my butt.  In the literature of foreplay, anal touching gets ignored because authors just want to skip to giant cocks and blowjobs.  Girls love getting their ass rubbed.

My shorts were hiked where he could see panty, but when I spread my legs he didn't reach under.  A dream student, nonetheless!

Actually it was better he didn't.  I didn't want to be masturbated either.

"Get over me so you'll be even," I ordered, but Josh didn't understand.  "Your knee here," patting across my hip.

Josh performed per instruction, now straddling me.

"Now go."

He shifted his weight forward, palms on my shoulder blades.  I was paying less and less attention to my shoulders, though, the object of his ministrations.  (That's such a good word.  I don't get to church except with Cindi sometimes, but in his way, a minister is there to help you to a better place.)  Josh's crotch was sliding against my rear, the "go" I invited.

We listened to the rhythmic brush-brush of fabric sliding against fabric.

"Harder," I offered, raising my fanny.

Sensing my acquiesce, he abandoned pretext of backrub and pinned my shoulders to the mattress.  His penis, barely restrained, boldly furrowed while my bottom flexed back.  He wasn't concerned about shielding his arousal now.  The protracted rub by the refrigerator told me that Josh's performance increases when he feels in control.  Twice he went too far on the down-stroke, the end of his cock catching on my butt.  Thank God I had shorts on.

I managed to elbow my torso up for him to encircle my breasts.  Not fondling.  Just clasping to grind me.

The poke of a hard dick is unmistakable, both in shape and resilience.  That's Cindi's thing about slow dancing -- work a thigh in and he can't get away.  Ejaculate him right there on the dance floor.  You kind of have to hold him up.  So she says, anyway.

I don't know much about erotic dancing, but I do know something about frontal hugs.  It's a way for you and a guy who's just your friend (and should be only that) to acknowledge feelings.  He'd not squeeze your boob, but you love how he rubs your bra strap.  You love how he hugs you without turning sideward.  It tells you you're a girl.  After a moment, though, you better end the hug.

Josh was getting too lively, as I could tell from his quickened breathing.  At his age, he wasn't planning ahead.  As much as I found myself liking his rear attack, I had to restrain him.

TOPLESS

"Unhook me."  No need to come up with some excuse about too tight or whatever.  I couldn't just tell him to screw me because he and I didn't share that sort of vocabulary.

He fumbled with my hooks as eagerly as would any boy in the backseat.  The mysteries of bra closure have never been clear to the male sex.  Eventually he loosed the strap and I rolled sideways clutching the garment.

He raised enough for me to complete my rotation without ceding the advantage of straddle.  I didn't want him off, either, other than we still had some clothes to dispose of ("of which we needed to dispose", if this were being graded).

I left my bra to drape me and flopped my arms outwards.  With nothing to hold them, my breasts list outward.  The valley between broadens to ribcage wide enough to draw your hand without feeling softness.

Josh put his hands on my stomach.  Thinking that he was heading into my pants, I sucked in my tummy.  But his fingers crept to the unhooked bra and followed the hem of each cup.  Had he worked up the valley, he'd have felt the tautness of the skin.  On the outsides, however, was the softer slope.

I moaned, which for a brief second seemed to confuse him.  But I was smiling, again thinking of Erik.

ERIK AGAIN

Erik and I would climb up to the tree house and he'd fondle my chest.  It was never surreptitious.  Like seeing my panties, he'd bumped my front ten-thousand times when we were doing other stuff, but that wasn't in the tree house.

At first it was just with one finger, outside my top.  I'd hold very still.  Then we got to where he'd touch inside.  I think he was surprised how he could make my nipples change under my bra.  We'd giggle when it happened.  If it was after dusk, we'd take off my blouse, even.  Then we got to where, if it was dark, he could take off whatever I was wearing on top.  Most of what I wore just slipped up.

Finally, and this was a long time later, I'd take my top off, even during the day.  That hassle other boys made about them made me want to make them just for Erik.  We'd sit in the middle of the platform, nervous that someone might come by and peer up.  Once Erik's mom came looking, but we got low.  That was always one of our funniest stories -- me bare-boobied up in the tree, her calling, "Erik, Holly.  Suppertime!"  He kept rubbing, just to get one over on his mom.

We spelled out no rules; we just understood, miles above the ground while we talked about everything.  We liked talking.  Air on me just made it nicer.

Sometimes I'd feel his erection against my tailbone, but that wasn't something we chose to pursue.  He trusted me not to push against it too hard.  I'd seen his penis shape five-thousand times, but just accidentally when we were changing.  He never had an erection then.  In the tree house it wasn't scary.  I liked him feeling the way.  I knew about erections from references in Teen Girl stories.  Those were the years when I started to want to be an author.

Erik taught me that sex has a temporal dimension.  In a tree house, nobody can sneak up on you, so you choose your timing.  We were more sensual in the tree house, just kissing and playing with my boobs, than our classmates who mindlessly fucked on mom's new sofas.

For other boys, my breasts were targets.  When we got new band uniforms, everybody got measured and they printed the size right on the tag.  Except for fat Ronelle who played drums, I had the biggest bust.  You just looked at the labels.

A neighbor boy (not Erik) would try to look in my window.  I shut the blinds after I found out.  It was nice to be noticed Erik, though.  When I started going out, not that often, my date would go for my blouse before we'd hardly kissed.  It was never, "What do you want to do?"  So dating didn't always go that well.

Eric was a boyfriend who'd like me even if I were flat.

FAST FORWARD TO JOSH

Now, years later, they're still attractions.  Josh's fingertips were now within the edges of my cups.

"You can look," I offered.

The bra slid upward and off.

"Oops!" I giggled, bouncing a little for effect.  My nipples stood like acorns, small ones anyway.

Josh's eyes widened.  He'd already assessed their dimensions, but now they were wobbling in the air.

Small-busted women can have extraordinary nipples, but big-busted women rarely have small ones.  I'm no exception.  Mine are encircled by areola just a tad darker than my skin.  Josh must have already noted the color through my bra.

Not just the guys I've let in my bra know about my nipples.  As mine came into their own, I had to wear thicker fabrics.  I didn't want to show when I had to give an improv in Speech.  It's when you get called on that they come out.  Lots of girls just showed off their little nubbies, but I didn't nip for the guy on the street.

It's almost impossible to mask a nipple when it's erect, but that doesn't happen to me much in public.  Maybe I show something playing tennis, but it's okay in sports.

"Can I touch them?" Josh croaked, as if that wasn't exactly what he was doing.  "They're pretty."

"We're friends.  It turns me on, too."  It was so comfortable with that bra off.

Right about here the phone rang.  Being somewhat indisposed, I let the machine answer.  "Hi, you've reached 761-5472.  We can't come to the phone right now.  Please leave your name, a brief message and your number and we'll get back to you.  Bye," spoke mechanical Holly.

A familiar voice, just a bit low, "Hello.  This is World Voice.  If you could save 5 to 35 percent on your phone bill each month, what you do with that extra cash?  We'll call you back soon to find out.  Thank you from World Voice."

Okay, Cindi.

Josh covered me with his palms and then pulled back until I bounced free.  He brushed them and then squeezed.  He squeezed again.  He hefted to feel the weight.  He pushed them together and let them slide out, rippling between his fingers.  He squeezed them like supermarket fruit.  My areolae goose-bumped.

"I'm not hurting them, am I?"

"They like it.  Like by the fridge, but I didn't want you to know," my fingers mentally crossed.

"I could sort of tell."  His admission bore a hint of insecurity.  Was it okay that he'd noticed?  Cindi says to make a guy squirm a bit before you let him off the hook.

"And on the sofa, you made them hard again."

"I thought maybe you'd let me, but I wasn't sure," Josh admitted, still not too sure about associated guilt.

His honesty surprised me.

"Don't you love how fun things just happen?"

Josh seemed relieved, but then furrowed his brow.  "Is being in here, you know, okay?"

"On the sofa we'd be cramped," I compared.  Actually, I'd have been pleased with myself even if we were on the kitchen floor.  Sexual satisfaction doesn't much depend on location.  People have sex every possible place.  But turning his question to one of comparison seemed a handy diversion.  Cindi thinks I was pretty smart.

"We're just on the bed, not in bed," I rationalized.  "It's better to share secrets where we're comfortable."  Then I addressed what was probably of more concern to him than the site.  "What we do is our secret."

A nod.

"You're having fun too, right?  Like when you gave me the backrub."  I paused.  "And where you're better."  I thrust my pelvis, in case he'd any doubts.

A grin.  I'm sure he though that he'd got plenty far, getting teacher bare-chested.  

"They want a kiss," I announced, shutting my eyes.

But I wanted more than a sucking.  Change one letter, a Scrabble move.

REHEARSED VICTIMIZATION

I'd already imagined how I'd handle it, even jotted my lines in my Writer's Notebook

"What are you doing?  It's broad daylight!" the imagined me would wonder.

When his intention became undeniable, I'd weakly protest, "We're not married.  We're not even on a date.  I'm your English teacher!"

He'd face a strong female, but he'd be the stronger.  I'd writhe while being disrobed.  "Oh, Josh, I'll be naked!"  I'd use one arm to shield my top, the other, my bottom, neither thus effective.  "Don't look!" I'd beg, affording him every view.

Deprived of my clothing, I'd negotiate, "Okay, but don't put your hand down there."

"Oh, don't do that!  Ten seconds, that's all, and you have to stop."

Ten seconds would become sixty, but I wouldn't watch the clock.  Liquefied, I'd ask, "We're just fooling around, right?"

"Wait, I never said inside!  One finger works better.  Not too fast."  I'd be pushing back a little more forcefully.

When he exposed himself, "Oh, Josh, it's so big!"

As he positioned himself, the story-me would act confused.  "I thought we were just going to kiss."

I'd pound his back.  "You're squashing me.  Let me go!  Scoot further up.  Maybe I'm not big enough."

I'd buck as he penetrated, my heaves in sync with his testosteronic thrusts.

"Josh, not too far."  I'd make sure he made it in all the way, of course.  (Readers like a bit of theater.)

"Well, maybe, just this one time," as I accelerated.

Refusal, denial and acquiescence would devolve into bedspring thumps.  Overpowered, I'd convulse in shuddering climax.

As we relaxed, "Nobody's ever laid me like that before."  (Actually, this bit's up for grabs.  Should I be a virgin in the story?)

Afterwards I'd employ first-person plural.  "Josh, we can't let anyone know.  We just weren't paying attention, okay?"  He would still be holding me, escape precluded.

"Josh, you're getting big again!  If I promise to not escape, can I show you something?  Cross my heart."  (My story ends with a future.)

BELOW THE BELT

Heck, Josh could have laid me just by falling forward, what an older guy would do.  Wham.  Bam.

But Josh was more infatuated with my breasts.  My bra still was strapped to my shoulders, so off it went,

"Josh, you can lie down," patting the bed.  He obediently fell to my side.  For him, he'd gotten really far, felt terrific tits, his teacher's, even!

My left hand grabbed his right and thrust it between our hips.  Perhaps he thought I was handholding to end our tryst at second base.  But then I turned to him, caught his far shoulder with my free hand and pulled him to face me.

Cindi's experience is that guys lose interest in kissing as they gain interest in screwing.  Why spend the time?  Women, on the other hand, see kissing as part of the package.  Ms. Joy of Sex even claims to have reached orgasm while only kissing.

Josh didn't seem as unsure here.  We'd only begun lipping before he tongued my teeth to show he'd been around the block a few times.  I responded accordingly, adding a few encouragements and letting him run the show for a minute.  He wasn't that original, but he was indeed enthusiastic.

With our mouths still working (Cindi has a great story about wearing braces), I intertwined the fingers of our clenched hands and thrust my hips to trap our fists, my knuckles on his penis, his knuckles on my mons.

To confirm my offer, I drew our hands an inch toward our stomachs, and then back down.  Then up and down again.  The third time I wasn't leading.  Just back of fingers, pajama bottoms and shorts.  My knuckles bracketed the base of his penis.  Maneuvering into my symmetry, he found something also.

I squeezed the fatness in the fabric.  He squirmed, but not away.

When I explained the maneuver to Cindi (it took a couple of tries, as she kept assuming that it started off with him groping), she thought it was cool, something worth remembering for a shy boyfriend.  She'd call it the "Holly".

I giggled to Josh, "You were like this when you bumped my butt."  I limited my prior knowledge to just the backrub.

"I won't reach inside or anything.  I just can't believe how big," as I worked down to his testicles.  I didn't grab, as boys get ball ache, so I'm told.  I did cup them enough, though.

"Your balls," I told him mater-of-factly, "feel cute."  I'm sure boys don't think of them that way.  "But this is better," doing what a girlfriend's hand does best.  Josh's was what a girlfriend likes best in her hand.

SHORTS SHEDDING

His exploration was circuitous, his hand moving to the fold of the cuff and onto my panties.  I doubt that he'd ever touched the front side of occupied panties before.

"Keep going," I encouraged.  The vulva was just beyond.  Cindi says that men don't like to be guided, but Josh, at this stage anyway, wasn't quite fully a man.  Almost, though.

His thumb slid directly to my snap and undid it with a twist.  He had my zipper down before I could even afford him better access.

"That's more comfortable," I smiled.

I imagined a video camera above us.  It would see topless lovers kissing, hips tenting our hands.  This would be some video -- one copy only, for Cindi to watch.

KS AND CO

I was rather proud of my accomplishment thus far.  Nothing by power.  Nothing by surprise.  Nothing by lie (meanly intended, anyway).  Getting to different places takes different kinds of work.  College work gets you to a place called "teaching contract".  Cooking work gets you to a place called "banquet".  Writing work gets you to a place called "publication".  Arrivals take different times.  Sexual work gets you to a place of many names.

Cindi doesn't call work, work; it's all serendipity.  A teacher finds herself in a classroom and helps the kids.  A cook in a garden sees some herbs.  A writer doodles and a book appears.  Good stuff happens if you let it.  Put both sexes together and mating happens.  Retirement, lasagna, a hardback and orgasm aren't destinations, but where you end up.

We drove to Colorado once.  With AAA driving hours, a Kansas day ends up being either more-productive work or less-productive work, depending on road conditions.  Either way, it's work.  To Cindi, checking out before 10:00 AM and checking in before 8:00 PM is all you aim for.  What happens between is Kansas.

How'd we do?  We're eating a complimentary donut in the lobby of the Jaybird Motor Lodge, Salina, KS.  Jack and Twila, owner/managers, went to KU (in case you missed the name).  As they now run a motel, maybe they were English majors.  KU's pretty good in creative writing.  Every Big 10 (Big 12 now?) championship that KU ever won is on the Jaybird's walls.  "10 percent discount to Jayhawk alumni" is on the marquee, but Cindi and I wouldn't lie about something like that.

Kansans notice the practical.  "You need to fix that handle before it comes off," suggests Jack, looking at Cindi's bag.  "You take it up Main to the Ace.  Ronald there has some bolts and keeps his electric drill under the counter.  Tell him Jaybird sent you.  If he has another customer, they have a real nice aquarium.  Coffee's twenty cents in the little cup.  Ask Ronald to feed them after he fixes the handle.  He'll explain their names."

Now we're in Columbine Organic Coffee Shoppe, Aspen, CO.  Our "hostess" exuberates, "These Scenic Mountain Wall Plaques do look like wood, don't they?  But they're made out of a new material that's dishwasher safe.  That's $3.74 with tax."

$1.87 a cup?  The Shoppe didn't even have decent refrigerator magnets!

You have to drive through Kansas to get to Colorado.  You have to bed the boy to lay him.  Is it "work"?  Say your radiator exploded in Kansas, so to speak, and you wait in the Salina Carnegie Library during the repair.  The librarian eats at Sammy's Coffee and Cream and invites you along.  You never make it to 11,000 feet.  Would your trip be a bust?

PAJAMAS AND PANTIES

Josh bounced my cushion of hair, at the door, but still a bit unsure of my expectation.

Unzipped, my shorts barely hung on my hips.  I bounced a little until he sensed the issue and we pushed them down.  I hooked a leg with my big toe and sent them flying.

"We didn't want those, now did we?"  Plain cotton undies were his last obstacle.

During my shorts shedding, I'd kept a hand on his PJs.  Give me an A in Penis Management 101, Exploration and Enticement.  Boyfriends could attest that I passed.  PM 201, I suppose, is more about fulfillment.  I've been around, of course, but maybe didn't finish that subject.  Redbook says you're best at about forty, but Cindi says late twenties.  But she read my eyes, not my too-quick laugh, and added that Redbook knows their stuff.  That's Cindi for you.

I rolled back for the imagined video camera to have a proper shot.

Josh had before seen my panties from the back (in the kitchen), from the bottom (on the sofa) and with my shorts unzipped, at least a V's worth of front.  Now he could see the where the cotton dipped into the valley.  I rolled out my thighs to pronounce the topography.

"They're just white," I admitted, striking a non-conversation topic.  "I have some prettier ones," I added for no known reason.  I thought of offering him this pair as a little memory, but decided I didn't want evidence floating around.  Cindi totally agrees.

Sliding over the thinness, his middle finger brushed my clitoris, though I suspect that he didn't realize it.  He instinctively pushed the fabric into my labia.  I instinctively pushed back.  I'm not sure what significance he placed on the damp cotton.  Though I'm twenty-eight, it was special!

YET REMEMBERING ERIK

I felt Erik's penis when I was sixteen.  We went to the movies, but didn't see it as dating as it never involved asking out.  We were kissing at CinePlex, my leg against his.  Then he squeezed my thigh, something new.  I doubt that he'd planned to, but if he had, it would have been okay.

I pressed his leg harder to tell him I liked it.  Then he crawled his hand under my skirt, most definitely new territory.  He'd never rubbed my leg in the tree house, perhaps because a tree house is for kids.  At CinePlex we were a little older.

Big decisions take very little thought, or, perhaps more honestly evaluated, stem from subliminal thought over a long period.  In any case, I put my hand above my skirt to look like we were just holding hands.  This wasn't for somebody else to see.  I pinched my legs shut and he stopped.  But then I rolled them a bit apart to not be too much in charge.

Erik may have been marching nowhere, but now he knew he could.  He spread his fingers and drew them back together, sweeping a little higher.  I moved my knees out a little more.

Like in the unprinted lines near the end of Teen Girl stories, his fingers found my panties.  Everything till then was as playing together, childhood extension.  Touching panties made things different.

After the movie we moved to the back seat of my folk's Volvo.  (I drove because he hadn't finished Drivers Ed)  I let him lift my skirt and touch my panties again, all the way on front this time.  I expected him to stop, but Erik touched my pubic hair.  My push up communicated something.  He didn't go much further that night, but we knew I was his.

On later dates we'd skip the movie, doing just a tad more each time.  We'd already hung out together for years already, so why rush sex?  He learned how to part my labia with two fingers and use a third to dampen me with anticipation.  If we were by ourselves, we'd take off my panties.  If we someone else was in our vicinity, he'd just slip inside the elastic.

Erik eventually inserted his finger.  It wasn't even uncomfortable.  I may have been a bit directive, but I really wanted him inside.  If we could lose our virginity to a finger, it would be less traumatic.  I didn't come or anything, but it was good.

It came naturally to slide my palm over the folds of his denim and against the protrusion.  I think he wanted me feel him much sooner than I did.  Only when I started to rub big circles did I realize how big a boy could get.

When Erik first climaxed, I'd been fondling through his sweatpants and, all of a sudden, he sucked a giant breath.  I didn't register the full significance until I felt the sop.

"I didn't mean to," Erik's embarrassed apology, as the event subsided.

"It's okay."  I thought a minute.  "I liked it, too."

He looked at me the longest time.  Then we kissed.  Then we laughed.  After that time, I'd do him a lot through his pants, even at the movies.

He let me pick the moment to reach inside.  We'd stopped on the way home from a school play.  I remember unbuttoning the lower half of his shirt.  Pulling the end of his belt from its loop.  Unhooking the buckle.  Popping the snap.  Sliding the zipper.  Finding the elastic.  He was facing me, straddled with one knee on the edge of the seat.  His pubic hair was sparse and wiry.  His penis felt like a banana, bigger than when felt through his clothing.  Maybe he was even a little bit proud.  I was proud of him, anyway.  I was worried about hurting his testicles, though I knew where they'd be.

I was having my period.  He knew that without me telling.  He always just knew.

I masturbated him flesh on flesh.  I got semen on my new blouse, but I told him it would wash it out.  I sponged it off the next morning after I looked.

We'd try to find a dark place.  When I'd inadvertently glance his penis, I'd not stare.  In darkness, our triangles looked black.

This was when we quit going in each other's rooms after school.  I'd get topless in the tree house, even naked if it was evening, but I didn't want him to see me in bra and panties searching for my tennis shoes.  Funny years, those!

He didn't even know that I wanted to be masturbated too.  Truth be told, I didn't realize that he could.  Teen Girl titillated about lovemaking only.  I knew how a real climax felt and sooner or later he'd have found the way.  Maybe I'd just have taught him.

We would have had real intercourse on one of our beds when the parents were away.  Double virgins.

But his dad got transferred in the start of my junior year.  The last day we climbed up in the tree house and did everything we knew for the longest time.  It was the only time I fully watched his erection.  It was our last time together, so our rules didn't apply.  He saw between my legs, too.  We'd even taken a blanket.  Had one of us breathed the word "love", we would have completed the act.  My great regret.

I had make-out dates with other guys afterwards.  Getting braless under the football game blanket would be one.  They weren't Erik, though.

Looking back, Erik and I loved Kansas.  Colorado would have ended our trip.  When Steve asked me out my senior year, I knew I'd settled for just the destination.

PERMISSION

Josh was no Erick, either, but at least not a Steve.

Josh's triumph was being in charge, how he got me into bed, kissed my tits, saw my panties.  Let him have that male satisfaction.  The reward of sex for a thirteen-year-old is the discovery.

I'd not have traded our foreplay for championship intercourse of the dinner date variety.  Were I thirteen as well, we'd have climaxed long ago.

But hesitancy persisted.  "You know, we can stop if you want to," I offered.  Something wouldn't let me lead the kid where he didn't want to go, no matter my need, no matter that I knew I could make him.  I'm not a predator.  He, not me, must decide.  (Cindi at first couldn't believe that I offered to quit, but then she said she respects me because it's like what a Catholic should do.)

"Just a little more.  I won't do anything you don't want to do.  Promise."

I'd tried.  He was hot to trot, but it was right that I checked.  I kissed him so he wouldn't reconsider.

"If you want, Ms. Rennick, I'll put my hands out where they can't touch.  But please keep doing what you're doing."  He was worried, but not a worry that would worry me, if you follow.

"It proves we trust each other, Josh.  You'll never tell the other boys.  I want you to be the only one.  You can do anything to me your body wants to.  Anything.  Okay?"

"And you can do anything with me, too.  Don't tell my folks, though."

"I promise." No problem there.

"You know more about things than I do," he acknowledged.  You're right about that, Josh boy.

I shivered, probably nothing that Josh could sense, the twitch marking the moment where design irrevocably yields to commitment.  A girl organically knows there's one outcome.  Cindi calls it her "pre-come buzz".  She's never had the shiver and didn't score.

His last thought, "Is it okay, Ms. Rennick, on top of the covers?"  He probably wished we were in the dark.  Making out's best where touch reveals what sight can't.  Erik and I liked evenings.  But Josh couldn't stay till sunset.

"Josh, here on top we can see my breasts."

"Okay, Ms. Rennick."

NUDE BOY

Time to verify the merchandise.  We'd hit the bed with me at four to one advantage: blouse, bra, shorts and panties to just his PJs.  Now we were even, panties vs. PJs.  Success comes when it's zero to zero.

"I'll let you see first," his offer.  It didn't occur to him that the girl's normally the first naked.  Either sequence works, of course.  I think that him first is one reason Cindi finds this story so interesting.

I pulled away his elastic.  Careful to not contact his risen flesh with more than my gaze, I bared the boy to his thighs.  With most events, you forget some of the details.  In this case, I have no idea what happened to his PJs after that, but I do know that they played no further role.

I lay my head on his chest to get a closer look.  Oh, Josh, I thought, you hold no secrets.  I've given you most of mine and will soon surrender the remainder.  I cupped his balls in one hand and held his erection in the other for better view.

His abdomen was almost hairless except for a spray of black.  Projecting as it was, his penis was hard like the muscle of a man's biceps.  I could see the veins.  How can skin still be so loose in the middle?

Cindi was impressed, anyway, when I described Josh's anatomy.  The next week I found a cucumber of almost the same size.  "I'd like to have this in my vegetable bin," she said, biting off the end.  Did we laugh!  Cindi says that every cock is different, that each has its own personality.  I should make up some little name for Josh's.  I didn't.  I wouldn't want him naming my boobs.

"Beautiful cocks" is just bad writing.  They're not beautiful; they're interesting.  What can be beautiful, at least if you believe art history, is a woman's breast: continuous curves and focal point.  The Old Masters seemed to prefer B cups.  Cindi said they bedded their apprentices.

Not teaching English to Josh, however, it was, "Gigantic!"  Lame adjective, but what Josh wanted to hear.  "Exactly how I wanted you to get," I added, pumping him before he could formulate a reply.

I began his preparation in silence, then fell into nervous chatter.  "It's okay.  An erection is how a man shows a woman what he can do.  It makes us want to be sexier.

My hand was slow and commanding.  He was biting his lower lip again.

"Man-sized for sure, probably the biggest one in seventh grade," as if I were the school nurse with a book of measurements.  "Nurse Barton, I'll need a centimeter confirmation here."

He actually blushed when I praised his dick.  Banal banter, but he needed a teacher's voice.  I remember Composition about real conversation.  People don't spontaneously vocalize logical, profound, woven word patterns.  So I'm not pretending that I wasn't babbling.  Probably Cindi scores because she's a better talker.

"Is that really true?  About me being big?"  You get my point?

"I can hardly get my hand around it."  I'd already done the encirclement through the pajamas, of course.

"Ms. Rennick, are you going to, you know, play with me?"

"No, Josh, you're big enough to do more.  Look how it's making itself slippery to help.  You want to put it in me, don't you Josh, if I show you how?  Then we'll be happy the same way."

A nod.

FALSE START

I drew my melons up his abdomen, moving sideways to bring them into his face.  "Hi, Mr. Tongue."

"Hi," was all he could reply, mouthing my areola.

This was kind of fun.  I moved downward.  "Hello to you, too," dragging a bosom across his penis.  Was I even thinking?

Suddenly he gave a sort of strangled gasp and semen spurted my ribs.

"Ms. Rennick!"  Josh looked terrified.

Oh, Lordy!  I'd been concentrating on my boobs too much.

"Wow!"  What could I say, wiping away the mess as best I could and staining my coverlet in the process.

"It earned a kiss!" I added.  I don't believe in oral sex, of course; it just happened.  It wasn't like I put it in my mouth!

And Josh soon started to rejuvenate!  No bum info from my friend Cindi.

"Wow!" an honest interjection this time, as I flipped him from hand to hand.  His penis, now at 45-degrees and still swelling, rebounded whenever I let it go.  We laughed at the little soldier.

NAKED GIRL

"My turn to lie down," an order.  I stretched out on my back.  "You let me see yours," I reminded.

He made a barely perceptible nod.  "We'll both be naked," his rather obvious conclusion.  Children have a thing about fairness.

Then the damn phone rang again.  My can't-come-to-the-phone blurb answered and a poorly-disguised voice announced my library book's in.  Give me some time, girl!

I clasped my hands behind my head to better observe my stripping.

Taking how I'd disrobed him as the proper sequence, he lifted the elastic enough for us to see my bush, a bit darker than that on my head, more curly, as that sort of hair tends to be.  As he tugged downwards we saw the thicker tangles.

"There's more," I suggested.

My heartbeat doubled when he exposed my twin folds and I pumped my pelvis into his palm.  At an apex he pulled my panties the rest of the way.

My thighs weren't splayed.  Don't just present the package.  My clitoris was extended, but couldn't tell how much he could observe.  He must have seen something, as he gave it a one-finger press.  I could have climaxed right there, but instead tried to list my class schedule backwards.  It's funny how your mind can go in one direction so much easier than in the other.

Akin to his futile efforts to block my seeing his cock, I too prefer to keep myself out of full vision.  A guy knows what I've got.  I know that he knows, but there should still be something left to Eros.  I'm just a bit modest about my own anatomy, at least compared to a certain teacher friend of mine.  Too late to worry about it now, though.  The body wins out over the head on occasion.

"We're even," he proclaimed.  Not bad for a kid who came to get an English book.

I was easy pickings.  Leaving me pantingly close to orgasm, he slipped his finger up and down, up and down, probably his discovery of the feminine lubricant.  He'd turn the corner knuckle-deep in my vagina and return to circumnavigate my nubbin.  I sucked a deep breath every time.  I'm sure my little organ was totally visible.  Cindi says some guys never figure it out.  Don't marry one!

"Like this?"

"Ohmygod.  I mean, yes."

JOSH'S TRIUMPH

I was wincing in anticipation.  As I needed orgasm pronto, it was time to retake control, Cindi style.

"When a girl's slippery means that she's ready.  Do I feel sort of wet?"

"I think so."

"You should be on top," rolling him above, "like that."

My knees were as far apart as a twenty-eight-year-old's go.  I had to wonder about mid-school girls.  His weight flattened my bosoms like pancakes.

   Foreplay finished.

   We were nude.

   I was mounted.

   He was erect.

   The moment had arrived.

"Now we're going to do what two people do who trust other."  I guided his penis through my bush to prolong the titillation an extra moment, then down my unabashed wetness.

Back when I lost my own innocence, I thought it would get neater.  It didn't.  Steve had just kept coming at me, wearing me down.  No question that I wanted to not be a virgin, but I'd have preferred it to be something that I decided.  Steve figured that big boobs meant I'd do it.  It wasn't like he really did anything that hurt me, but he didn't do much to help.  I wish we'd have been naked.  Erik and I would have shared our nakedness before we shared our bodies.  The first time's supposed to be special.

Steve had been new at it too, but wouldn't admit it.  I pretended to like it so he wouldn't feel bad.  We drove right home.  We actually went steady afterwards, unsure we could get anybody else.  I told my friends, and I'm sure, he, his.  Kids are so insecure.  I got to like it, though.  Steve wasn't bad; he just was usually thinking about Steve.

For Josh's first time, I didn't want to be a Steve.  I'd not found another Erik, though.  I needed to court Josh in one afternoon.  At twenty-eight, you don't dally.

Thirteen-year-olds aren't dumb.  He knew he was losing his virginity to his English teacher.  I just hoped that in his retelling over the years, he'd not use my name.

I could sense a trembling.  Women notice such things.  I held Josh close for a moment, as a mother might hold her child.  (Not being a mother, I'm just speculating, of course, but I think I'm right.)

"Right here," aligning him.

Josh, my obedient student, pushed past the muscular ring at the entrance.

"It doesn't hurt," I assured.

His eyes were shut tight as he slipped further.

I gasped, not having made love forever.

Finally he was all the way, just like in my dreams.  An inch of me matched an inch of him.

"Again!"  I loved squeezing his retreat, then yielding to his advance.  On his third or fourth stroke, a bit too ambitious, he popped out, but I brought him back with hardly a break.

He began to hammer.  His face was buried above my shoulder.  His hands lifted the small of my back.  He puffed like a locomotive.

I did what I could to help him not roll off.  I whimpered, but who knows what I said.

It was fast, wet, deep, carnal, raw.  Juices were royally spotting my bed, but laundry's a small price, in my book.

"Oh, Ms. Rennick!" just as I was starting to get there, too.  I vise-gripped so he couldn't extract and I kissed his virginity away.

I hardly cared about my own state right then.  I'd laid him!  Cindi, oh Cindi!

"Oh, Josh," as we regained our breath.  I could feel his heart still pounding.  "You've done this before."

"No, Ms. Rennick, never.  Honest!"  I knew that, of course, as otherwise he'd have screwed me on the sofa.

"Your first intercourse?  You did super!"  Pedantic teacher fallback, but he was only barely listening.  "We can call it 'fucking' too," I added brightly.  Colloquial English, the living language.

Josh looked at me as if a teacher wouldn't know the f word.  After a pause, "You liked it too, didn't you, Ms. Rennick?  You know, me inside."  He smiled in self-congratulation.

"Especially how you were so far."  No exaggeration there.  Post-coital gab with a boy isn't easy, but I cared.  Cindi claims that she always cares, but when said she means caring about the condom, she stepped on my foot.

Does a guy lose his virginity when he enters or when he climaxes?  Cindi says the former; I say the latter.  Who knows?

COMING TOGETHER

I may be caring, but I still needed to climax.

We lay for a while, me filling some gaps in his knowledge of birds and the bees.  It's no more complex than direct objects and indirect objects.

I made him promise again that nobody, nobody at all, would ever know.  I taught him how to lick my nipples.

"Ms. Rennick, I bet I can do it again."

Oh yes, my young lover!

I straddled, guided his erection to the vertical and enveloped flawlessly.  I rode him cowgirl style, light in the saddle, so to speak.  My breasts danced.  I'm not sure if he grabbed them for the touch or to steady.  Cindi, the wet blanket, says the latter.

I could have climaxed whenever I wished, being where girls orgasm best.  Cindi and I totally agree about on top.  Guys can shoot while riding a bicycle.  For a girl, it's little changes in pressure, modulation, eye contact, how you got there, what you'll do afterwards.  Looking down, you see the synergy.

But motivated by his first screw, Josh pulled me forward and rolled me under again.  I was too far-gone to protest and we never lost a beat.

I held on and on, always wanting just one more stroke.  I came like crazy, moaning and bucking and clutching, as he fucked on.  I saw colors.  I felt rain.  I saw Erik.  He (Josh or Erik?} was a penis; me, a vagina.  Penis and vagina became the same.  The rest of us wasn't even there.

Oh, Cindi!

At last I slid from the orgasmic plateau, but then, unannounced, I came again, right on top of the first!  I think my first was clitoral and the second, vaginal, but it's hard to know.  I feel weak, recalling.

I never wanted it to stop, but finally it did with his third ejaculation of our afternoon.

Cindi didn't even know she'd told me it would be like this.  How could I tell my friend that she was at my breakfast table when she was hitting her snooze button?  Spooky.

I was dazed.  I hadn't felt so spent for the longest time.  Forever, actually.  Josh could feel my flutters, a woman's "Wow!"

He understood.

"Ms. Rennick," finally.  "I almost fell off because I'm still learning."

When I dropped Josh off near his house, he asked, "We're special friends, aren't we Ms. Rennick?"

Very special friends!  I told Josh he could come again.

"Here in your car?"

He knew what I meant, though.

"Our secret."

"Our secret."

The phone was ringing as I opened the door.

"Hello Ms. Rennick.  This is Dillmans calling.  Would..."

"We did it, Cindi!"

"Scored?"

"Really scored!"

A shriek on the other end, "Are you okay?"

"Really okay!"

World-champion motor-mouth just wanted to listen.

VISITING RITES

I seduced the guy in February and now I'm stuck with the consequences.  Poor joke, sorry, but you-know-who liked it.  Here's how things stand today.

Josh comes over once a week, screws my brains out, and complains that I won't do it every day.  He never picked up on "Holly", so I'm still "Ms. Rennick."  Oh, well.

I've have had fifty-three orgasms with my boy lover.  Writer's Notebook.  One-day record, three, but that was a day when school ended at noon.  Usually one.  Cindi notes that one is one more than before.  I protest that our first afternoon was his doing.  He grins.  Most of what he remembers is just having such a big dick.

As it's summer, I hire him for a couple hours of yard work.  I have to pay him so his folks believe it and then I have to turn around and do the mowing.  It's not like I pay for sex; it's just how we have to do it.

Josh can run up between my boobs.  My bra keeps them just tight enough together.  Cindi can't do it, as I remind her.  One time we had sex in my car, garage door shut.  Not like that LaFavre teacher who got caught.

Josh has a book from India that shows any number of positions and you don't need to read Hindi.  When I passed on one idea, Cindi pointed out that it's just the Sidesaddle.  I'd thought maybe we'd imported it.  For most of the weird ones, he doesn't get in as far and I don't get the friction.  American standards are best.  The middle of the bell curve is there for a reason.

When I have my period, he doesn't insist.  (Maybe he thinks you can't.)  He's never tried to get in my ass and I'd not let him.  We don't watch porn.  Maybe people who use cheap motels need two-bit inspiration.  Guy meets knockout babe in casino, etc.  Fifteen minutes of in and out.  Boring!  Identical deep moan soundtrack.  The actresses have implants.

Josh trusts that I've got birth control covered.  Anyway, he's never asked.  I've never given Josh even a beer.  Cindi says that if you ever get nailed, alcohol helps them line up counts.

Our afternoons set my laundry schedule, as I do like clean bedding.  I loaned Josh my umbrella, which he's yet to return.  My name's not on it, fortunately.

I don't worry about him bragging.  They just still ogle me like before.  My neckline keeps them interested.  It's not my breasts they see, anyway, just between.  It gives them little boners.

EPILOG

I've thought a lot about the age thing.  Pedophilia is grownups hurting children.  Josh isn't little and I've not hurt him.  We get the "appropriate teacher-student boundaries" spiel in our in-service days.  (When was the last time we had an in-service about subject knowledge?  And not, say, "Emerging African-American Female Authors".  They write no better than do I, but about being an African-American Female.  Big deal.)  My after-school life isn't anyone's business except Josh's and he votes in the affirmative.

Josh doesn't have the layers of macho stupidity bred by teenage bravado.  I'm a teacher.  I wear glasses (except in bed).  He's a schoolboy.  He wears Nikes (again, except in bed).  We share a certain common fondness.

There are many terms for sexual intercourse.  We're not in love, at least not me with him, so I don't use the romantic names.  "Screwing" is the right word.  Why pretend otherwise?

I do suspect that I've solved a little mystery.  Martin and the ninth-grade girl, ponytail and olive skin (but I don't know her name) who does Business Environment (stuffing envelopes) in the front office third period.  Her bras have strings.  At NEA Martin wasn't faithful to his wife.  So why would he forego Miss Ponytail?  Cindi didn't refute my analysis.

Zak's woman teacher still has to be Jessica.  The reason I hesitate, though, is that Cindi said that this teacher took Zak to her book closet.  The PE wing doesn't have them.

Josh will want to poke some cheerleader sooner or later and I don't want AIDS.  When that happens, I might just select another little friend.  Cindi says, of course.

   Young enough to be trained.

   Old enough to keep secrets.

DAD

I said earlier on that I'm not too complex.  That doesn't mean that there's nothing underneath, but rather that what's submerged is pretty easily explained.  You may have noted my woman-astride bias.  You may have guessed why.

No, my father never raped me.  He never exposed himself or had me masturbate him.  At least a rape victim, in some awful manner, can identify the event.  He even denied me that.

My father took photos, glossy Kodak quarter sheets.  The early prints may have had some artistic value: rubber ducky floating beside my sudsy breast bud.  Because I loved him, or thought I did, anyway, it was okay.  A child wants to please.

If he'd made me sleep with him, I'd have, even if it were wrong.  When I'd try to get close, though, he'd call me a slut.  I've no memory of him ever kissing me goodnight.

Later photos were me in a public place, skirt raised sans underwear.  We'd spend hours "getting it right".  Why didn't I refuse?  I was the slut in the photos, that's why.

"Scoot forward on the rail."  All he'd say about above the shoulders, though, was, "Look sexy."

I had two looks.  One was distant, aloof, a blankness I've since discovered is indeed "sexy".  Bosomless fashion models know it.  Two was lewd.  "Please, mister.  I'll suck your giant drippy dick in my sweet little mouth!"  He liked that one best.

He never threatened me; there was no reason.  My protests were about standing too long in the cold.  Sometimes I'd even suggest poses, not because I liked them, but because I wanted some sort of say.

He'd show me the photos in the chemical baths.  I never looked more than a moment, except at a set where I was playing with a dog.  If he showed me off to take away my options, it worked.

A bad girl doesn't even care. 

He stopped when I matured.  Adult wasn't his portfolio.  Thank God I had no siblings.

In college we could get counseling at Student Health.  I used all twenty sessions.  What I learned was this:

  1) He had no right to do it.

  2) I was young and it wasn't my fault.

  3) I'm not alone.

  4) I need to tell it (which is what I'm doing right now).

  5) I am, and always have been, a good person.

I do intercourse.  I'm just hesitant about men, is all.  I won't be sexy.

Anybody that profits from shame should get his balls cut off.  I'd go to court, tell the jury that I'm that little slut in the picture.  Forget this shit about digital composition Togo Island autonomy, or whatever.  I'll testify, my sweet ass, I'll testify!

In six years I've spotted eight girls who acted alone like I was alone.  We're never told details, but I hope I've done something to help some of them.  Being a good teacher is a lot more than covering lesson plans.

Cindi knows why I'm slow on the upbeat.  The evening I told her, she rocked me and rocked me and we cried.

A FRIEND

Cindi knows the whole Josh story, of course.  It's almost like I really made her that video of Josh's first time.  I figured that she'd be jealous, me having a boy boyfriend, but maybe that's not fair.  Cindi goes out a lot because.

Cindi asks intelligent questions.  She's sort of a detail person.  She makes her students memorize all the parts of a moth, for example.  Do you suppose they'll ever need such knowledge?  Hardly.  She has suggestions about mid-school male libido, for example, setting a once-per-week limit.  Everybody needs limits.  I think that's why she's stayed a Catholic.  She and God negotiated hers.  I suppose He negotiated her down like she negotiated me up.

Everybody needs a Josh.  Erik was the best, though.  I've even thought of tracking him down, but he'd be married.  I'm smart enough not to go there.  Erik's no longer thirteen.  Josh is.

Everybody needs a Cindi.  If you talk to a friend, things stay healthy.  We talk about lots of stuff, not just guys.  We're deciding if she should fix Hobbling Honda or trade it in.  It hardly runs when it's cold, so she'll call me at 7:15 for a lift.  I can tell from the thermometer that the phone will ring.  Holly the Taxi I am.  Then she's never ready and has to finish dressing while I drive.  I could write a whole piece about when we pass the Hostess Products step-van.  It's not as if she's naked or anything; maybe just her blouse left to button.  Then we miss get-go coffee in the teacher's lounge, so she'll bring me some Folgers Instant after first period.  She brews it on her Bunsen burner, probably against some District rule.  No, sex wouldn't be the focus of the Honda-saga.  I'd work in some mechanics things so women can learn about carburetor.

Just to complete the count, I've said that I've had seven partners, five between Steve and Josh.  Of the five aisle possibilities, two in college and three after, Ryan being the last.  None was married.  We never had difficulties, but then I guess we never had any big successes.  They sooner or later went elsewhere.

Cindi says that we just hang in there till the right two appear.  Did you catch that?  Plural.  We're looking out for each other.  It makes me a little teary, even.  If that doesn't happen, Kansas is much bigger than any state, so there's lots to do.  We're heading for South Dakota in August to see who lives there.  People like us, we bet.

Out of 30x2x6x25 students I may teach, I'll spark a few good writers.  I might create some literature myself, if I may be so bold.  Holly Rennick, Nobel Laureate, Literature!

One of Cindi's students, not Cindi, might win the Nobel in Chemistry.  You have to do science, not talk about it, to win.  Does she care?  Of course not.

I knew real love with Erik and am getting really good at sex with Josh.  It took a while to get here, but my father didn't totally mess me up.  Best of all, I have a really good friend.

Speaking of Cindi, tomorrow we're doing lunch and she promised to catch me up on something going on in her life.  Maybe I won't be surprised (whatever that implies).  She's always got something interesting to report.

THE END

Holly on the Web

Wherever you found this story on the web, thank you to the server.  My problem is that I've no systematic way to update the various servers.  As literary errors (or just poor word usages) are made known to me, I'll repair that which is salvageable on http://www.asstr.org/~Holly_Rennick/.  My website's not much graphically, I admit, but HTML isn't my native language.  If you take the time to read me, don't wade through older version.

You can contact me via the site's message form, HTML code by the smart people at ASSTR.

Holly

