Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 02:33:00 -0600 From: thomas Subject: REBECCA REBECCA (M/f, inc., mast., rom., lit., humor.) by Tom Emerson "I'm having an adversarial relationship with my tongue, daddy," nine year ld Rebecca Lind said to her handsome young father. "I have just such a relationship with the entire freaking language," Niles responded, "not just my tongue." "But you're a writer," the child noted, "you struggle and win and you get paid; I struggle and don't win, and just end up confused." "About what?" the thirty year old asked. "Things that Stephanie Bridges told me about. They're like colossally huge secrets, but she said I could tell you anything I wanted any time I wanted, and she even gave me some ideas on how to start. One of them, for example, was to ask you if you loved me, not as a pixie, dumpling, apple tart, pumpkin, sugar, or sweetheart, but, at least a little, as a chick, or at the very, very least, a wanna-be chick." "I don't know," the man sighed, easy on the drama, "I get a look at your toes, and I think how much I love each one, and after that, it all gets kind of warm and fuzzy and misty, and, sure, I do the best I can, but all the way to a chicken?" "Chic," she said, "there are all kinds of differences, from dietary preferences to laws concerning human consumption. And that means I got-ya, because your instinctive reaction is just what Stephanie warned me about. My handsome, tall, athletic, to-die-for dad, clucking up his own weather system as soon as the conversation passes the ribbon-in-the-hair level. You had several choices, according to my now best friend in the world, including moron, baboon, screech owl, pissed-off tiger, or nervous panda bear, but the stereotype is what once was called Kentucky Fried, and, as Ste observed at one point, there's comfort in knowing one's beloved daddy-o is a temple of convention and an altar of propriety." "So deciding not to chop something off you was lucid and apropos, after all," the cute dad mused half to himself, "I must be getting better." "Yes," quoth the young female, "but remission or cure? Clever talk masks the symptoms, but Stephanie and I spent quite awhile together, and she indoctrinated me about to the dead center of each kneecap, so vamp and prevaricate as you please, but, end of the day, I will be a chick, and if I don't hatch in your arms Ste says her dad and Ray and Chris, her teen brothers, will lend a hand in furtherance of the incubation process. Of course," she added, "there's a polite euphemism involved in using the word `hand'." "Yes," the writer agreed, "but, speaking of poultry, who knows, for sure, that it was not a hand that pushed Humpty Dumpty off his great wall?" "Stephanie is sweet and mild -mannered," the girl said, "she wouldn't push anyone." "And no other possibility occurs to you?" the man queried, "no inkling that the present conversation is not just at a level or two over ribbons, but takes the blue ribbon for top prize in the conversations-daddies-don-t-have-with-their-natural-or-otherwise kids." "Conversation?" the pretty young one inquired, her eyes rolling in clear indication there was a rhetorical slant to her question. "Doll," Niles said, "we're parked at the mall; you were expecting show and tell?" "Analysis and precision," Rebecca replied, "now that I think of it. Anything as sort of more than half-way out of this world, if Stephanie is to be half-believed, must have a bad side, so, maybe you're right and we should start with a long father/daughter talk." "Starting with the bad side," the man murmured, "wrong foot forward, the slips betwixt cup and lip, the dues of the devil, all ending conveniently at the doorstep of a fate worse than death." "Well," the girl observed, perhaps a trifle crisply, "you're the one who wants to talk." "Rebecca?" the young father asked, "how serious is all this? I mean I don't want to go breaking your kneecaps with a tire iron to find out, but it sounds like more than girl-talk and flirting." "Good," said the nine year old, "you're finding the bad side -- I can tell from your voice.- after all, so we can get that bumblepuppy out of the way. Taboo, highly original sin -- not -- and the strictures of mores, paradigms, and the health of the underlying social fabric taken as a whole or in segments. But there's an apt little clich� available to anyone choosing to avoid the pursuit of jocks in favor of the pursuits offered by the library, and that phrase is: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." `If your friend has any more ideas on continuing this conversation, now would be a good time to elucidate," Niles Lind suggested. "One of her suggestions," the pretty school-girl daughter said, "is folding my dress neatly over the back of the front seat. She likes ironing, but she doesn't love it." "Helpful," the man admitted in a voice hollow enough to imply the opposite may have been true. "Oh, I think something more than that," the child said from under her pretty brown bangs, "I mean that would be like saying the ocean is helpful if you wanted to cruise on The Love Boat; a bit heavy handed on the understatement for a professional, don't you thing?" She was going on quite nicely, even she could tell, so she continued: "it's more like Stephanie Bridges presented us with a diamond key to a golden door, not rusted iron to some strange and misbegotten place full of halves and quarters, not some moldering abode of sallow worms and smarmy trolls, but a place of reward and ultimate compensation for diligence and probity in daily life stretching back many years. And the prize is in the will; in respecting, sure, but it goes a lot deeper than that; and ends up as a will for what she and her family have, for being ultra close, frequently and passionately. Wanting that, before it happens, not having it happen, like it does to lots of girls, then being cajoled or manipulated -- or paid -- to engender some substitute for free will." "For an action girl, you do seem to have your wits about you," Niles allowed. "That's what I'm getting at, if I wasn't fighting this tongue," Rebecca said, "that it is action. The will part, the wanting part, it goes on so long, passively, with me, since I was four or five years old, that it becomes some kind of verb thing; ever more so and never less, if that isn't overindulging in hyperbole." They sat for some moments. "Dad," the girl said, "do you know why I wanted the Buick?" "I've never figured that out," the man admitted, "I was sure you'd take affirmatively to the Jaguar with its twelve tapokita-tapokita, Walter Mitty cylinders." "And its bucket seats and floor-mounted shifter," the girl responded, "yes, the appeal was there, but so was the wanting, as you now know, and the retro Buick with its stogy bench seat seemed more an answer based on reality than the fantasy fling of the Jag." Yes, the girl had it all backwards, any boy would know that, yet perhaps there was method to her disorientation, an agenda not incompatible with a hipper and more now lifestyle than the cabin of a discreet choice of automobile would seem to indicate. Again, the conversation lagged. Why? Because there was nothing between them. "I should answer one of your questions very seriously," Niles said, "yes, I love you, yes, am probably in love with you, and yes, more than as a pumpkin or sweetie pie." "And I at least pass as a chick?" the girl wanted to know. "You're too much of a dream is what you are," the thirty year old replied, "it is impossible to imagine anything beyond playing "This Little Piggy Went to Market" with your toes; of your wanting more than that, responding to more than that. Any father -- any man -- would feel the same, and most wouldn't end up Chicken, they'd end up a chicken freaking shake if they made it past the nugget stage." "Proving virtue is its only reward," the little library queen said, "because all the others belong to beautiful daddies who respond. Imagine for a moment," she went on, "if you don't. If we just go on sitting here. How will you feel a year from now? Like you didn't do something majestic because of honor? It's axiomatic the things you miss late in life are those reasonable things you failed to do when you had a chance. It is my intention that you be paid back for being a stupendously interesting and responsive father, especially when it comes to reading, by assuring myself, at the youngest feasible age, that when you're in your eventual decline, you have no stark memories of missing this or avoiding that. All Stephanie did, in spite of her diamond key, was focus a hundred already thoughts and feelings; let me know that the kind of thing I want, almost instinctively, to share with you, and especially, being gender sensitive, for you to share with me, are real things, and things that have happened all through history in most known cultures. I'm not asking to go on a picnic on the dark side of the moon or pitch a tent in the Marianna Trench, just for what happens to most girls in the back seat of a car with six or eight paws and three or four tongues lingering for one or two minutes." "That's one way of putting it," the handsome writer allowed. "Well," Rebecca responded, "any smart alien would say there must be a better way for a girl to grow up, you know, a little at a time and without all the emotional overburden of romantic love with its demands, jealousies, manipulation, and frustrations -- they're all great for writers like you, but not much fun for the excluded kids, that I can tell you. It was bad enough when it was abstract; when the will and wanting were vague and ethereal, but now that I know it can actually happen, and often does, I'm having less trouble focusing than the leading optical physicist on ye olde planet, or Dr. Pearle, even." "No news to me," the young man rejoined, "I can feel the heat." "Dad," the girl said, her voice now a faulty whisper, "I know about the physical part, the mechanics vis-�-vis mammals. When Ste went into graphic particulars as to do with, you know, the size of an adult male versus an ear of corn, I expressed my doubts on the subject, but she pointed out some obvious things like females not much bigger than I am giving birth to babies, and even cats and kittens, so I was reassured. She told me it might hurt our first time, but explained that was another reason to be with someone who cared about you, not just what you had." "Is she really all that graphic?" Niles asked (he was, after all, a writer). "And then some," the girl said, "about her dad and her two brother. No detail omitted, no facet spared. She has two other lovers, close friends of her dad's, and, guess what, she has each and every one of her blue eyes focused on you." "How do you feel about Griff Bridges?" he asked. The two were acquainted. "I have eyes, too," the girl replied, "and someday. She wants to do open sleepovers. I stay with Mr. Bridges, Ray, and Chris, and she stays with you. All of us being together at a resort, too, someday, or at each other's houses in the meantime. I guess it's sort of swinging, but not all over town and through the papers, just the Bridges, Chuck Dodge and Fete Casareal, plus Cindy and Melissa, who are their daughters and the same age as Stephanie and I." "I was an idiot to have mentioned the heat," Niles intoned, "as little as a minute or two ago, I didn't even know what the stuff was." "Can I say something kinda graphic?" the pixie asked. "Yes, doll," her dad said. "Stephanie has never seen her dad, you know, not the way boys get. She said once Cindy and Melissa each invited a friend for the night, and she still didn't see him that way." "And when they congregate to bury poor Griff at the age of thirty-two, she'll have missed her chance, forever," the man observed. "Ah, but think of the memories," the nine year old said. "I mean, how far is it straining logic to say, yeah, you could die somehow, I guess most any old time, and if that happened, at least I'd have more than unsettling dreams of being open and the way I want to be with you." "I'll have to admit having the same thoughts," Niles said, "now that you bring up the pleasantry. To lose you after holding you in my arms would, I admit, be less than losing you now." Rebecca giggled. "What's that about?" her dad asked. "Something Ste said," she answered, "that the first time with her dad they talked a lot so she'd be ready for what happened, perhaps more that he would, but, after awhile, they were talking to keep it from happening." "I know the feeling," Niles noted, "the knowing we've crossed the sacred bridge, than baring an earthquake or butt-head Arabs, it's going to happen with us, and, seeing how it's the most delicious and luminous feeling I've had since my third date with your mom, I want it to last just as much as I assume she did." "As long as there's a last to the lasting," Rebecca responded. "Yes, darling," he dad said, "there will be. Your mom had a certain look to her, a certain tone to her voice before we took the blanket into the orchard, and I not only see it now, I've been noticing it, at least subconsciously, for quite some time. So," he went on, "the answer is Yes. I want you fully and without reservation, at least semi-permanently, every time it doesn't interfere with your life." Was this the end of their conversation? Not exactly. Male and receptive female were too highly aroused to want to alter their hard-drug euphoria by so much as a thread or millimeter. "How graphic was Stephanie when she told you about her first time with Griff?" the young man asked in a faltering voice. This did cause movement, but just the girl sliding closer to the man, the better to hear what was left of his voice. "Very totally," Rebecca replied, "and awesomely complete." "Can I ask you something personal?" he said. "What?" "If this is an invasion, just say so," Niles said, "but I was wondering if, you know, while Stephanie was pointing out the virtues of her species of family tree, you touched each other or experimented." "No," the girl said, "but we both want to. She said, since she was giving me so much ammunition, and you were such an attractive target, it wouldn't be long before I was sullied and debauched and she'd look on me with more liberal tolerance, especially if it was my great love who was the first to be active with me. None of this was carved in stone, of course, and she let me know that any untoward delay in the progress of my development would be intolerable to her, and thus she'd always be waiting with, I kid you not, open arms." "You have a meaningful streak in you, daughter of mine," Niles observed. "I have a forbidden and entirely illegal love streak in me," the girl responded calmly, "with religious overtones, because of how I even imagine it will feel to have your chest against mine, not to mention how it will actually feel. In both cases, it transcends secular feelings, anything conceivable, and, if Ste's stories are half true, being bare-chested with you would be merely the first step, a preview, sort of like an onion with a truffle and caviar cleverly inserted into the center." "Yes," Niles croaked, "sear as five hundred degrees for an hour or two, you know, just to be sure the flavors are fully developed during the cooking process." "I don't think a man should complain," Rebecca said, "after all, you can, you know, radiate. How's a girl meant to do that?" Niles Lind had faced a dilemma for the past five years. He'd watched young novelists fade after a single half-decent project. Fiction, he had to admit at least privately, terrified him. It's claim on the writer was exacting and unmerciful; in New York City, alone, were ten odd thousand editors just chomping at the bit to say no. They published him, readily enough, because his credentials fit a dust jacket rather well, and he ate through projects -- titles = with a persevering diligence that kept him off anyone's problem-child list; all mellow and smooth like so much custard, six books and slowly counting. Fiction, unless erotic exploitation, was a savagely perverse mistress, as demanding in each line as a comfy biography was in a whole volume. And there was ample evidence in support of Niles' pessimism. Gigantic industrialized nations with entertainment figures in the tens of billions of dollars failed, year after year, to come up with a single obviously outstanding practitioner of the novelist's art. "But wasn't that," his thinking went on, "perhaps all in the past?" Had he not found a character to break the spell? To smash the glass of the invisible barrier, and guide him into the realm of the make-believe? Literary artists were notorious for using you-bet real friends and enemies in their work, deed for deed and word for word. If that was a given, where was he to find such a model? working the problem backwards. Work it upside down, and the answer still came out the same: yes, he knew such a person, such a model, such an inspiration, such a literary Cupid. And, cherries on top, not only was she a driving elemental force, her observations on practical matters were acute, and she even gilded her lily with a certain way with imagery and words, and, physique notwithstanding, radiated a certain visceral energy of precisely the sort needed to drag those everlasting English constructions from an inert collection of plastic pieces all constructed by some hyper optimist who graced the assemblage with an optimistically sized space bar, as if tapping the silly thing would automatically lead one to the next word. Mssrs. Smith and Corona apparently saw a future in which writers would have daughters like Rebecca Lind, and there is abundant proof of their optimism in every scrivener's studio. "Behold the MIGHTY space bar," the young man hailed himself, managing to smile shyly to the girl who returned a nervous grin. "I think I want to go further than you do," he whispered. "What, Daddy?" she responded. "First," he replied, "I want to use you in my work, which means more than a physical interaction, and, that's the minor one. See if you can guess the underlying reason I want to go further than you do?" "Brilliant father, brilliant daughter," the girl mused, then stared him in the eyes. "The new findings on incest." Her IQ, like her father's, had been certified as unascertainable by mensa because she toyed with the tests instead of concentrating an making a best effort. All she'd been able to achieve, in four tries, was acing the tests in one-third the allotted time, then she'd get bored, the clock would keep ticking, so no one knew. In the present instance, she sifted her library of a mind in fleeting seconds, and her eyes grew wide. "Oh, Daddy," she whispered, "yes. Yes every day forever." Good answer, but what was the question? Was she really that quick? He'd always pictured his eventual literary onion as, yes, well roasted, but sliced and diced with care, while here she was the, little miss angel wings and pixie dust, the diabolically curved blades of a food processor, complete with serrated edges in carbon steel. Where would be the finely drawn introduction of theme and character, with Rebecca modeling? On the other hand, if she really had deciphered the vague code correctly, where would such a mind lead, its fractious start notwithstanding? Novel territory? He winced inwardly. Would she simply end up taking all the fun out of it? Another non-fiction tome, the biography of his own kid, with his subject such a shining star his role in her story would be reduced to that of contributing secretary? Seemed farfetched, but if ever there had been a time in his life to grasp at straws, diversions no matter how tenuous, now was that time. She sat four feet away in her prim white summer dress, her slim and slightly heart-shaped face framed by any number of natural curls, all breaking in a sea of boyish bangs framing huge eyes that could be seen in the dark. Rebecca was delicately built, yet there was a haft to her shoulders that foretold a future (and now) swimmer. Wasn't that enough? Did she, heaven help us, have to be the entire package; physically alluring as only a child can be, with an IQ beyond the comprehension of the very geniuses who thought up the fiendishly tricky and diabolically intricate patterns of the test, in the first place? Or, maybe he was wrong, maybe the girl was barking up the wrong tree; didn't get it. Any possibility his daughter was normal, though, was soon vanquished. No way. "How long do you think we'll have to wait?" she asked in perfect answer. But it was not something to take chances on. "Wait for what, darling?" he asked in return, not exactly knowing if he wanted the right answer or not. "Zygote One," she said, trying not to look at him as if he were a simpleton. "There's a short-lived career," she mused, "two cells one day, and the next, an embryo." She probably remembered it, nearly a decade though it had been since her own brief fallopian career. Irrelevant thoughts, and she cut through them like a curved steel blade. "You want to go farther than you think I may want to go," she summarized, "you want to get me pregnant." "Definitely," the man said. "So, how long do you think?" Rebecca asked again. "Sweetheart," he replied, "I'm not an authority on the subject, but I think it goes something like this. If you are frequently with a number of mature males it will have an influence on your hormones since your body may interpret events in a more primal way than your heart and mind. If you spend a lot of time at the Bridges, you may be able to conceive within the year." "But only yours, Daddy," the girl whispered. "How can we make sure of that? The whole thing is timed by the cycle, but if I'm too young to have developed one, how can we be sure its one of your sperms?" "Darling," the thoughtful father said, "I think if you're free until your breasts fill a shot glass, then use protection with other males, we'd stand a good chance of having what we want." "I don't know," the girl sighed, "here we are talking about bringing off the world's smartest baby, and I'm dressed for the critter's christening." She had a point. They could talk zygotes and cell clusters `till the cows came home, what good would it do, especially when what they were really looking for were topics of conversation that would divert them from the impossibility immediately in their future. "Do you think that's behind it all?" Rebecca asked after some moments, "the subliminal urge for your child? I just thought of it as wanting to see you, to feel your hands on me, and to be secretive with your for long periods of time as often as possible... I didn't equate it with what we're talking about, not until now." "And what kind of sense does it make, now that you've had an average-mind year to mull it over?" Niles asked. "I may need another a-m month," the girl mused, "because I have an issue to sort out, specifically, how to distinguish between my love for you, as a dad and a boy, and my passion for what actually might happen between us, thanks to all those stalwart Bridges-and-friends' hormones, so here I sit, dressed, as it were, for a tea party, trying to distill passion and love into..." she giggled "shot glasses." She was a delicate creature given to kind thoughts and sweet language, and, to preserve the decorous relationship he'd built with his daughter over the years, Niles did not respond with an aside alluding shot glasses to highballs, no, that would have been on the bawdy side, and there was little enough time for her in the fairy princess stage of life without hastening the development of the sparkling young women to come. Shot glasses it would stay, plenty trick enough for a nine year old. Rebecca turned from her father, and it started. He moved to her and his trembling fingers found the top button at the back of her dress. "Stephanie said most of what happened first with her dad was verbal," she said, "that when it came to the physical part, they undressed as if they were used to each other, saving strip-teases and foreplay for later." "Where did it happen?" Niles whispered into her curls as he unfastened her second button. "Since they were off societies' radar by the very nature of their relationship," Rebecca replied, also whispering in the still cabin of the car, "they decided to slum and wallow so they checked into the Ultrasleaze, you know, never a bed made `till it's red. All the kids know about it." Suddenly highballs didn't seem so out of place. "Darling," he said, now well down her column of buttons, but still short of making any physical contact with the creamy smoothness of her lily-white back, "what kind of language do you want to use while it's happening?" "I had a feeling that was coming," the girl replied, "Ste said she and her dad talked about it too, you know, whether she wanted to be had like a slut or embraced as an innocent angel. They chose the latter, and she said she's glad. There are apparently a lot of words you can not say to make it extra special." "What if Griff and her brothers invite you to the Indecencio, or whatever you guys call your funkytown motel," the young father wanted to know, "would you become linguistically uninhibited?" "Oh, Daddy," the girl sighed, "that will be so completely different than what's happening now, I can't even connect the two things. Sport, corporal development, if it turns you you're right about the effect of hormones, and exercise, if Ste's right, versus having a daughter who's my sister while I'm young enough to be her sister." She was good at the proverbial mouthful, but her very linguistic adroitness, to use a spectacularly unadroit phrase, posed its own thorny little problem. Writing was, vastly, a process of leaving-out, just as sculpting is a process of leaving out all the rest of the stone in the mountain. What would he leave out with her? For openers, not a single square inch of the creamy, library-white skin of her nine-year-old back, no, indeed, each was fit for a sonnet, lily and perfectly white, each was a song and a story, and on the page would alight; let others sing of the bonnet, of ribbons blue as the sky, for only a single button remained, to those fairy square inches multiply. X times all, Y times more, no other dimension was needed; white as snow, softer than down, and to think she wanted it seeded. He did clamp down on himself, young Mr. Lind; Charles Osgood had given him a hatred of rhyming it would take his very daughter to alleviate. No poetry. Too easy. Ask a novelist to write a poem, and once he gets the hang of it, he'll go on for twenty pages before sundown. Ask a poet to write a novel, and he'll hang himself at sundown. Then, speaking of the subject, and her absolute beauty made any divergent theme welcome, there was the literary hell of the short story. Here the mighty longball Moe was brought to bay; no room to wander, no mercy from the hounds for the stray. Of the hundred top novelists, perhaps a dozen had published readable and popular collections of short stories. In all likelihood, most had never brought out a twenty-pager. Only the specialties' savagery as an ultimate testing ground broke through the revere of artist molesting child; kept him from raping the cute seventy pound girl as fast, as hard, and as long as he could, time after time. Unobtainable? Probably, but, meantime, he sighed silent prayers to the gods of brevity as he finally dared trace the fingers of his right hand from the base of the child's neck, down her tender back, nearly to her waist. "The physical part is nice," Rebecca purred. "If you took some odd thousand girls like you," Niles said, "and rented them out to men, ten minutes per man, per day, the renters would never age. You'd be doing an enormous public service." "There's be an enormous amount of blood," the girl responded, "if anyone but you tried it for even a second. We'll get to the Bridges in due time; but kindtime, because I can't bring myself to say meantime, not to my super dad, it's you and you alone; no boys, no men, and, except for Stephanie, if she wants, no girls. "Remember," the girl continued, "I'm a child. I need to grow out of things. If it takes me months to grow out of being alone with my dad, and no one else, than I guess that's the way it is." "Yes," her father agreed, "but be careful how many spikes you use in staking out your position, because, while I'm in favor of it being just the two of us for awhile, if we're going to get you all nice and fertilized you're going to have to mature a lot, and that means Griff, Ray, Chris, and their close friends, as soon as possible." "I forgot," the girl said, "we'll have to compromise." "Don't let your position influence your judgment," the handsome young athlete whispered in his daughter's left ear as his right hand eased inside her dress to caress her high on her belly. Would the joke fail? The girl fail to realize she was in a compromising position? He might have little influence with the short-story gods, but surely there was a literary deity sensitive enough to spare him a totally hip daughter with its associated burden of trying to remember and later transcribe every word and gesture of the sweet, but scarily brilliant, nine year old. In the end his fat appeared to be pulled out of the fire simply by virtue of the girl's focus. She had no rejoinder, clever or otherwise, but plugged along with her theme. This put the fat right back, and over the hottest imaginable flame. "I'll be with them in a week or two," Rebecca said, "but only in my bed, in your arms, with my partners approaching behind an appropriately modified sheet, and keeping it between our bodies while they help me get ready." Of course, some parts of their conversation would be so memorable there'd be no need to even try to remember the content, indeed, it might be difficult to forget it. Very little light comes into the world of the nascent novelist, and it was a bit of a shock to Niles Lind to have literary salvation, a, delivered unto him, and, b, come to find out his subject was so fulsome a thousand pages would hardly serve as a prologue. Added to the bleakness of the unfolding situation was her earlier admission that she was tongue tied. What was that all about? An hour from now, would she be more loquacious than she'd been during the first of their talk? Free of the tension of the first time, and utterly delicious to listen to, would she, a, fail to contribute by virtue of over-contributing, or, b, distract him from ever writing any more about any thing? To be having thoughts like this while the child was still dressed outlined for the nascent novelist, oddly enough, half of what conventional mores and morality warned of concerning the temptations of the silky softness and vivid repartee embodied in select young bodies. But he was a writer, dammit, that was the problem; another father would have loved her for who she was, not tried to invade her soul and exploit her every word. "'Masturbation,'" Rebecca whispered over her left shoulder. "That's not a rude one, is it daddy?" "No, darling," was all Niles could think of to say. She plundered his empire, however ethereal, with her innocence. If only she was autistic or anorexic, he could beat her half to a pulp, then rape her vaginally, anally, and orally to see if the trauma would break the pattern of disassociation. There'd be a book in that, win or lose; a vital social document, anecdotal and amateurish as it might be, to say nothing of a compelling page-turner. But no, not Rebecca, neither withdrawn nor scrawny, hopeless. "'Naked,'" the girl said, "that's the first one Griff used with Stephanie, and they never use potty words." Niles almost laughed, but, on quick second thought, realized there was little triviality involved. Parents were one thing, peers, another. Young Miss Bridges could have enabled his daughter in using language searing as a brand, words which were as stigmatizing -- if not more so -- than a flagrant tattoo; words that reeked of self-indulgence and triviality, and, finally, words that did much to incite current prejudice against guardedly tolerable behavior for time immemorial. The lawyers dealt in words and religion's vast history of extreme fallibility was overlooked because what the church said somehow sounded right. Never mind that they made Bernadette sound right, to say nothing of persecution of the infidel, it still used words to disassociate group A from group B, the many tens of millions in group B universally ignored and routinely castigated and subjected to the lock and key. Even unpublished novelists live in a different world, and Niles realized he was a denizen of this world, I mean here he was quibbling, in all seriousness, over points of preferred vocabulary while his hands were now slipping Rebecca's dress from her swimmer's shoulders and folding it neatly over the back of the front seat of the detailed, as few cars are detailed, and now glowing Buick. It was a cloudy day, likely it would rain; they were comfortable in the quiet machine and could see an easy hundred yards in every direction. The windows of the Wildcat were tinted, all but opaque, with only the windshield vulnerable to curious eyes. Partly temporizing, Niles left the car for a moment to check the visibility into the car, and could only see his naked daughter if he looked intently through the reflection of the glass. Almost safe enough to ameliorate the tantalizing wisp of danger, and wouldn't that have been a pity. Not looking around nervously, the young writer re-entered, this time through the passenger's door, removing his shirt as he seated himself to the right of the nine year old. "I'll bet there are cases," the girl said, "where you could say `naked' and get away with it, but not say `half-naked.'" "That's know as the allure of the potential," Niles said, " "Do I lose allure by no longer being potential?" the sweetie asked. "Yes, love," her father sighed, "an eighth of a gram per century... you'd better get dressed." "How do I stack up potentially dressed?" "To be honest," Niles said, "the potential of your walking around fully dressed after what happens between us, is as good a definition of `allure' as I can think of." "I dreamed I was with my daddy without my Maidenform bra," Rebecca said. She wanted to follow her father as a writer, and so it was that her comment gladdened the heart of the patriarch, for a grasp of American trivia, like old underwear ads, was very much that drop of oil that got one past two a.m. and on to three o'clock. "Do you like me looking at you?" Niles whispered. "Yes," the girl said, "you can tell by looking, or at least I can. You've never seen me since I started to grow a little, but I've never been like this before, even when Ste was going on and on in the most graphic way you can imagine." "I'd like to feel your breasts against my chest without the two of us touching in any other way, would you like to experiment that way?" As he spoke, Niles slipped out of his shoes and socks, his cargo shorts and his boxer shorts, quickly ending as naked as his child. Once his clothes were over the seatback, the girl sidled onto her knees facing her father. Niles did likewise, posing for the girl with his hands linked behind his neck. Here she copied him, arching her chest modestly to him as she crept forward on her naked legs. In spite of their different heights, they managed a sensuous meeting of their panting young bodies, her half-strawberry-size nipples, hard as frozen grapes, searing his sleek swimmers chest so thoroughly he wondered at the danger of radiation poisoning. As her nipples met him, both gasped a tense Hi, then remained motionless for minute after minute, staring at each other, not comprehending anything outside the fiery and rapidly growing intensity of their first open incest. "When we mate they'll be against your stomach," the girl finally whispered, "I can't wait to grow up so it will be against your chest." "I can mount you from the rear and molest you while it's happening," the father said. "If I can't kiss you, and can't feel your chest against me, at least I want to look into your eyes," the pixie said, "always, but if you hold my against you the way I want to be held, another male could get behind me. It would mean another compromise, but maybe it could just happen once so there wouldn't be anything extreme about it." "Who would your first choice be?" the father asked. "Ray," Rebecca replied, "though it will probably be Griff until Ray, you know, reaches full adulthood. He's the only one I'd leave you for, and then it would be less than five minutes away." "I'm glad," Niles said, "that's a good thing to get out of the way early in a writer's life." "What I want to get over early in life," the young female responded, "is presenting him with your daughter. You know, enough bait to catch a whale, and Ray's just thirteen, doesn't even weigh a hundred pounds." "I daresay it would keep him mesmerized by the home fires," Niles allowed. "Starting when she's three," the nine year old added: "I would have loved feeling you against me this way, even if I couldn't do my part, for as long as I've known myself. So Ray gets to bathe with your daughter any time they want, go tell her long bedtime stories, and share with her, in a more timely fashion, what we're sharing." Was it the absurdity of life which took such a merciless toll on would be writers of fiction? All, on earth, the average kid needed to be happy and fulfilled was a computer system, yet family houses became more gigantic by the week; all the emotion and passions suitable to a balanced existence were available to any affectionate, attractive family, in the family and a small group of friends, yet this was forbidden state by state and country by country in spite of epidemic levels of at least semi dysfunction resulting from the rhetoric of the era. Charting a course through the morass of convoluted logic and cracker-dry superstition was hard enough on an individual and temporal basis -- pragmatically -- that any amateurish attempt to delineate it must, by force of nature, launch off into oversimplification and its handmaiden, overkill. It had not occurred to Niles before, but did now: perhaps his holy grail, the American novel, simply was not obtainable. Could not be written simply because there was nothing to write it about. The love stories had been told, the adventure yarns seemed to multiply on the very shelves of the most cloistered library, and the sagas crisscrossed one another after you'd read some hundreds of extra fat books. It was daunting, and then some. The new writer faced competition with the large number (though relatively far lower than minute) (mi-nute) of existing professionals, and, to rub salt in the wound, established writers could be borrowed free or purchased for perhaps a tenth of their retail price. There was, of course, another way to measure it. Since no writer of fiction had made any kind of splash, even in the inner circles, in a number of years, perhaps the time was exceedingly ripe for one to appear on the scene. Again, little reason, on further thought, for optimism. Thanks to the perfection of the cheap word processor, publishers were inundated with scripts, further winnowing the chances of even an established biographer to appear before attentive eyes. The real fault of the system was it did not work. The books weren't there. Twenty names made up the end all and be all of the New York world, all conventional, dated, and as uninspired as it was politically correct to be. When they went out to carve, the mountain had little to fear. Five minutes, hands behind their necks, and they were not beginning to tire of the feel of each other's silky nakedness, but the extended duration of the intense sensuality hinted strongly of things to come, so they moved on. "Say that word again," Niles coaxed in a soft whisper, "the first one you though might be rude." "Uh," the girl paused, "m-something; molestation? No. A word to do with what's happening. Masturbation. Right?" "That would normally be the next step, not that we're on a ladder or anything," Niles commented. "I can spell it phonetically," the girl responded, "so it would be good to know why I might ever want to." One thing about coy language, it tended to drag things out. It took thinking over grunting, and the finer the mind, the more thoughts to process, thus the more slowly events proceeded, and, of course, there was an included joke that went along the lines of the reading couple still being fully engaged, one with the other, long after the feral pair or group had headed for the showers. Pretty funny. Gently the man placed his child back on the seat at his left side. As his right hand approached her low belly, she looked hotly into her handsome father's eyes and spread her slim legs widely. "It's almost the same for girls as it is with boys," Niles whispered, "almost all of it is. Same touches, same routines, same responses; you'd think it would be duller than it is." "Is it better with someone you're really in love with, you know," the girl wanted to know, "you and mom, for example?" "No, sweetheart," Niles said, "it is what it is, substantially if not completely isolated from loving, liking, or any other emotion. You can be bored and frustrated by someone you love enduringly, and spend hours sweating and gasping in the arms of someone you might actually dislike. Great marriages can be sex free, and a miserable couple can mate every four hours. That's the nugget of the conundrum; that in the end, it means so little, the weight of a feather on a scale balancing two locomotives. For example, it won't change our relationship in any way. In trashy families, daughters sometimes use their intimacy with their fathers against their mothers, lure the man from her with a younger body and the tightness, to be frank about it, of her newness. I don't see you pulling any stunts like that with your mom, and, even if you were inclined to, it wouldn't do any good because she became active at your age with your granddad, and she's been hoping something would develop between us so we can share what she did." "She must be committed," the girl mused, "to be watching a re-release of `Harold and Maude.'" Niles nodded, his face inches from Rebecca's as he found her fully and surged his fingers to the wetness low between her now bucking hips. Carol was in for high honors in the heroism department, that was a fact, enduring for her daughter what she wouldn't have chosen as an escape from wild dogs. Yes, the film was, is, and always will be horrific, a true testing ground of fidelity, selfless dedication, and devotion above and beyond the call of even such a brown-mouse of a beauty. "Yes, physical," the girl gasped, between whispered chants of "Oh, Daddy!" Lying across his lap, her head in the crook of his left arm, the girl planted her right ankle over the seatback and splayed her left up under the dash. She arched and bucked, sometimes closing her eyes, but more often staring at her father's hugely erect circumcised penis. It was incomprehensible there could be more to what was happening, but her first touch of her by now aroused lover reminded her that they were hardly, in kid-speak, to third base. (Note: In Rebecca's school, making it "home" meant full penetration, and making it all the way "to the dugout" precluded use of a condom, so "barely to third base" is as accurate as it needs to be.) It might be trivial and dispensable, but such a dissicated view left a lot out; in the present instance, seven inches of handsome young athlete now thrusting openly to her experimentation as she bucked and hissed to his experienced touch. Surely there was enough good in all of it to fill one otherwise vacant hour out of the twenty-four, and, besides, didn't people talk about it all the time as if it were not only the most compelling source of integrated involvement but the inspiration for much thought on the subject? Whatever. "Can we talk about sperm, daddy?" the child asked. "If you don't mind a messy conclusion to the conversation," Niles replied. "That's what Stephanie said," the girl noted, "she wanted to see what would be happening inside her when they became lovers, so she did what I'm doing and Griff showered all over her chest and face. Do you think I'm mature enough for that?" "Yes," Niles said, wondering if his child would ever again ask something as simple as "Daddy, can I have some ice cream?" "How about the part where he licked the sperm off her face and chest?" the booknubile asked, "then kissed her on the lips, do you think I'm ready for that?" Apparently it would be awhile. "You might survive," the man allowed, "which would be handy when it comes to identifying my body." "Oh, daddy," she mewed with put on little-girl dramatics, "you say the silliest things." She was such-a-mouse, her curls, her shy smiles, her avid engagement enhanced by her slow, thoughtful modesty, all belying a savage intelligence capable of cutting to the chase without stopping at Go, or collecting two hundred dollars, while, at the self-same time, attuned to dancing off over moor and highland on a merry and provocative chase, indeed. The was the total work of art under any circumstances; half asleep in her pajamas or jumping moguls on her dirt bike. There was more beauty to her chewing pensively on her pencil eraser than in a year of men's magazines, combined. Her voice lilted, her pretty lips smiled softly, slowly, and, if not rarely, rarely enough to dash any mood or circumstance with warm sun. She read, she swam, she'd had perhaps five friends in her life, and in every way anyone could think of was perfect. Now he was to have her, to enter her, to hold her in his arms while he exercised the extreme of his gender deep inside that slightly soft and silky smooth young stomach, and not in plunder, not in humility, not in degradation, all forlorn, outcast, and huddled, instead, at her will, her invitation, her instant response to being left waiting alone with her handsome young father. Same girl. There was the novelist's problem; picking berries in a bonnet, fishing with a hand line, or, now, lying back, long, slim legs widely splayed, rising confidently to his steady, sure touch. Her nipples stood high and hard from her flat chest, she mewed softly and steadily, and he masturbated her, as she stroked him, for half an hour, sliding so far down such a gentle slope it was a wonder they didn't start planning their next vacation or something. "Daddy?" the lightly panting girl whispered. "Yes, love?" he said. "You know, Stephanie explained what happened her first time with her dad so graphically I really think I pretty well got the picture. I mean she had to use Ivory liquid detergent as a model, but that's the closest thing to what it looks like, except for one brand of pearly shampoo, and there are dozens of brands, so I might not have known it, so, even though it's dishwashing stuff, she said that's what it looks like when he puddles it on her tummy. What I mean is," Rebecca went on, "is that I think I can kind of use my imagination, and maybe fantasize a little, to picture what happens, so, since I can do that, and since I can probably find out the scenic part at a future time, I'd like it to happen inside me, not on me." He'd already instructed her, vis-�-vis spikes, stakes, and positions to some degree, and with some degree of success, so he continued. "Darling," he said, "it sounds as if Stephanie and her dad shared something more than the sight of his climax. I mean, darling, the way you want would be indescribable, and holding you, afterwards, something quite more than that, but that will happen many, many times over the coming years, so I'm not saying No, but rather just reminding that there was a carnality in your friend's relationship with her father in which the eyes played only perhaps a tenth of the role, and, since a blind person, or a couple in pitch darkness, would have fully enjoyed what happened between the girl and her father, perhaps it can even be allowed that the visual and aesthetic values are inconsequential in comparison with linguistic activities that have nothing to do with language, seeing as how a mute would respond to them as passionately as a politician." "But daddy," the fabulously intelligent child said, "there must be something to what you see because people watched silent porn films before video." "I'm not coaxing," Niles said, fascinated that the girl now seemed to be arguing against herself, "I just want you to know the options; that, if you want, it won't be just watching me ejaculate all over you, but the kind of kisses Stephanie and her father shared, probably the wettest possible kisses outside the bathtub," he added, hoping it was enough to make his point without making demands. Rebecca's eyes went round. "Wow," she mused, "I almost forgot. Maybe you're not such a silly daddy, after all." Niles had a sudden flash of that inspiration essential to the literary artist. He suddenly realized, different time, different place, the two of them could be discussion the division of a roasted human, with the girl saying, "Wow, daddy," in her own language, of course, "I almost forgot to brink you the back of the neck." "National Geographic" would think that was cute, but no one would be likely to say the same of a six-three, fox faced swimmer masturbating his naked, nine-year-old daughter in the front seat of a car. In addition, no court in the land would be sympathetic to the fact the minor was also masturbating the adult, willingly, engagedly, and every more enthusiastically. Yes, she need have made no verbal response to her father's oblique commentary, her right hand was gripping harder, her fist stroking with a sexy double-clutch on his flaring head, then plunging to the base of his shaft, where she again added a mini-stroke and a hard little squeeze. Both were now panting regularly, and, though the rain had started, and the air cooled, sweating openly. Both hissed and mewed as their first time together joined them as two boulders would join if dropped into an industrial funnel. "Daddy, can we make it last a little longer?" Rebecca asked in a torn whisper. "You'll have to think of something, princess," the man said, "because there is very little left of me that isn't committed to soaking your chest with my seed in the next few minutes." "I was wondering," the girl gasped, and really she was only trying to help, "how you'll feel in a few weeks when the bedroom door opens and a sheet walks across the floor and lies on top of me while you hold me in your arms?" "I want it to happen so often," Niles said, an idea germinating, "that I'll move my computer into your bedroom and brace my keyboard against your head." Was he kidding? Getting her down on paper, distilling her in any way, was going to be trickier than Chinese arithmetic, so no holds could be barred or avenues overlooked. "My vote," the girl responded, "would be that you use a tape recorder, and why would I say a thing like that? Because, when the mystery males are with me, I want your hands all over us, every time." Niles managed to play at sighing. "I guess you're right," he said, "although you can't say the keyboard isn't my type." "Silly tiger," the girl cooed, "you make bad jokes, and kitties hate to be wet, silly tiger." With this she rolled and shifted, found the young athlete's jutting penis with her lips, then proceeded to assault and wet him more than half like a tiger, herself. Her tongue slashed an burned, bringing on the monsoon, her lips chewed and nibbled, experimentally, then quickly discovered that pleasing a man, inordinately, in this manner required nothing more than a firm grasp of the obvious, and that her lips were no less efficient than her pretty little hands.. Had he coached his nine year old too well? In playing up the secondary aspect of their first time together, had he put it so far ahead that that was all there would be? He was not complaining, not thinking of himself, but, also, not wanting to deny Rebecca the principal aspects and fully realized conclusion of their time together because the little girl was distracted by glittering objects beside the path. Not. "That's for tonight, too," his daughter said after gently easing her mouth away and regaining him with her now radioactive right hand. She was like a short-story writer approaching ten thousand words, aggressive and businesslike in wanting to be where she was headed. She guided has hand away from her thighs and positioned him flat on his back on the car seat, taking a stance between his widely spread legs. She emulated their pose when they'd first touched their chests together, and he immediately assumed the position, arching as now both her pretty young hands found him. Her left gripped him low, her right, perfectly sheathing his raging glans. She swiveled and swished, coating him thoroughly with his bad-tiger fluid, then resumed her willful journey with him. They traveled neither far nor fast, but, nevertheless, it was the trip of the young writer's lifetime. In uniform, he'd experienced marching in place -- he never knew why; maybe it was a perverse way of collapsing the enemy's pedestrian bridges -- and now things were different. Soaring in place. "You can pretend I'm Stephanie for a little while, if you want," the girl panted, her head bent far over, her father's erection planted near her just-budding nipples as she stroked him perfectly. One of these days were acuteness with language was going to cause trouble; too clever, too bright -- it was a risk -- only it didn't belong to some future time, it happened exactly on the spot and at the moment. "Guess what?" she whispered, "Ray wants to do this with you, too." He didn't even know the secret himself; sure, he was a cute enough school boy, perhaps taller and more coltish than the norm, but pretty much a friendly, low-key, fit in kid. Had he been attracted to the thirteen year all along? What was this ALL ABOUT? He was ready to cum with a passionate violence -- sure -- but it was hearing the boy's name that broke all bolts and sheared all locks. He cummed twice as fast and twice as hard as even in the orchard, then twice as long. His semen gouted, sprayed, and hissed against the naked nine year old's chest and nipples. She held him against her slim, graceful neck, then her lips, and still the explosive storm raged from the base of his spine as he coated her with rivulets and puddles. Much of his sperm splashed and showered on his own heaving chest, and he could see the troubled look in his girl's eyes as she became torn between watching the spurting fountain clasped hard in her little hands while simultaneously wanting to find his wet belly with her delicate mouth, then lie fully against his slick body to sense him with her wet breasts. For the second time the little girl seemed, just for the moment, tongue tied. THE END About the author. Thomas Cochran Emerson is entering his third year as a Web contributor. Under the pen name Feather Touch he published "Jimmy and Frogger", "The Flyyy", "Dennis the...", "Ropeyarn", "Creative Camp", "Blissy's Song", "Michelle's First Secret" and "Michelle's Second Secret". As R. Forbes Emerson, he has published "Hollywood Stories", "Santa Fe Stories", "Stonington (Me.) Stories", "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters", and, most recently, four hundred thousand words of "One Fish at a Time", a work in progress. All his files can be found in the" Nifty.org" Archive. Most are listed under Bisexual, Adults/Young Friends. Others may be found under Bisexual Camping and one or two may be filed under the heading sf/fantasy. "Boxers or Briefs?" is listed under Gay Incest. In total his contributions run to some 1.1 million words. Mr. Emerson lives in Belize, "slightly addicted to the Caribbean." While his stories never cheat in upholding the alternative tradition, readers sallying forth with optimistic outlooks would be well advised to always download alternative material. It can be many miles of rough road between this boy losing his underpants and that girl letting big brother experiment under her training bra. Yes, you have been warned. Emerson was born in his ancestral home of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1946, "The Year of the Porsche," in his words. An absolute devotee of the craft of leading English astray, thus providing gainful employment to those who would lead it back, he admits to being a hot-house artist with the modern word processor his soil, water, air, light, and enabling nutrient. "Hell, all I need then is a seed," he says. Directly descended from the leading activist of the Revolutionary War, and scion of a family that includes the most quoted man in history, his poet and philosopher great great grandfather; the CEO of AT&T during the heyday of Bell Labs and Western Electric, and other luminaries ranging from two governors (Winthrop and Bradford) of the Plymouth Colony to the founder of American Standard, he views his (native) countrymen as his subjects, and writes of and to them accordingly. His hobbies are limited to photography and trying to explain Samantha, his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, to an unamused father. Since flattery got him everywhere, he likes the occasional reader letter. Quote: "Was the phrase `adult entertainment' coined just for me?" Posted by Thomas@btl.net. xxx