The Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile
by
Mark Mathews

New Concepts in Human Sexuality Series Editor-Vem L. Bullough Selected
Titles The Armed Robbery Orgasm: A Lovemap Autobiography of Masochism
Ronald W. Keyes and John Money 164 pages 0 ISBN 0-87975-856-2

* Cloth The Breathless Orgasm: A Lovemap Biography of Asphyxiophilia
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0-87975-639-X o Cloth Raw Takni: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by its
Most Popular Male- Star Jerry Butler (as told to Robert Rimmer and
Catherine Tavel) Foreword by Vem L. Bullough 323 pages 9 ISBN
0-87975-625-X 0 Paper ISBN 0-87975-642-X 9 Cloth Whips and Kisses
Parting the Leather Curtain Mistress Jacqueline (as told to Catherine
Tavel and Robert Rimmer) Foreword by Vem L. Bullough 237 pages o
ISBN: 0-87975-656-X  Cloth OBSESSIONS OF A ZOOPHILE .. i. . news ks
9

John Glenn Drive Amherst, NewYork 14228-2197  Published 1994 by
Prometheus Books The Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile.  Copyright C'
1994 by Mark Matthews.  All rights reserved.  No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission
of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.  Inquiries should be addressed to
Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, New York 142282197,
716-691-0133.  FAX: 716-691-0137.

98 97 96 95 94 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data Matthews, Mark.

The horseman : obsessions of a zoophile I Mark Matthews.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-87975-902-X 1. Matthews, Mark-Sexual behavior.  2.

Bestiality.  1. Title.

HQ72.U53M328 1995 306.77-dc2O 94-38329 CIP Printed in the United States
of America on acid-free paper.

FOREWORD

Vem L. Bullough The first recorded instance of bestiality in
the United States (usually defined as contact between human and animal
genitals) took place in 1642 in a village near Plymouth Colony.  Thomas
Granger, a sixteen or seventeen-year-old servant, confessed and was
found guilty of having sex with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep,
two calves, and a turkey.

All the animals involved were slaughtered and burned in a great pit,
although there was difficulty in identifying the exact five sheep.

Granger himself was executed on September 8, 1642.1 The incident
emphasizes the horror and fear traditionally attached to animal-human
contact in American and Western society in general.

Bestiality in the popular imagination was associated with witchcraft
and satanic cults, and-horror of horrors-it was believed that it could
result in the birth of monsters.  Animal-human sexual contacts have a
long history.  They were forbidden in the Bible, which stipulates the
death penalty both for the human perpetrator (Exodus 22:19; Leviticus
20:1516) and for the animals involved.

Despite the dread and loathing associated with it, folklore about
bestiality is ancient, widespread, and enduring.  Greek mythology tells
of the god Zeus becoming a swan to seduce Leda, a bull to abduct
Europa, and an eagle to carry off the beautiful youth Ganymede.  A
modern myth attributes the death of the empress Catherine the Great of
Russia to a mishap resulting from her attempt to have coitus with a
bull (or horse).  Literary references abound ranging from Beauty and
the Beast, regarded as suitable for children (and Disney), to the ape
as lover in The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night and the swans
in the ballet Swan Lake.  The late comedian Lenny Bruce recited,
'Psychopathia Sexualis,/I'm in love with a horse which comes from
Dallas .  . ."  while the Woody Allen movie Everything You Always
Wanted to Know About Sex shows a psychiatrist falling in love with a
sheep named Daisy, the public discovery of which drives him to the
gutter and to attempt suicide.  2 Artists have also portrayed
animal-human contacts, often drawn from classical mythology, such as
the frequently depicted meeting of Leda and the Swan.  But there are
others.  In the twentieth century one of Picasso's more famous etchings
is a portrayal of sex on a classical theme between a centaur and a
woman.

There has, however, been little serious study of actual sexual contacts
between animals and humans.  We have not even agreed on the terms to
use.  Among the current terms, each of which represents a different
aspect of animal-human sexual contacts, are zoophilia, stroking or
petting an animal as an erotic stimulus; bestiality, defined above;
zooerasty, direct sexual contact as in bestiality but ' with a
decidedly pathological component; and mixoscopic zoophilia, sexual
pleasure derived from watching animals copulate.  The behavior has in
the past also been labeled as sodomy and buggery.

Alfred Kinsey, who reported on its incidence among his respondents,
called it "animal contacts" to avoid any judgmental terms.

About 8 percent of the males in the Kinsey sample reported having had
sexual experience with animals, but rates among boys raised on farms
were considerably higher: about 17 percent of farm boys experienced
sexual arousal to the point of orgasm and an equal percentage had
animal contacts that did not result in orgasm.  Farm boys most
frequently used calves and sheep while urban residents turned to
household pets, most often dogs.  3 Kinsey found that almost all of
those who reported animal/human contacts as adolescents had abandoned
such practices as adults and that sex with animals was usually not the
preferred means of sexual gratification.  Perhaps for this reason he
considered the laws against animal-human contacts unrealistic, and
suggested that the incidence closely paralleled that of seeking a
prostitute or a person of the same sex as a partner.  In his mind the
phenomenon probably should not even be classed as a paraphilia In the
Horseman, the narrator reports that when he was a teenager, he was
discovered having sex with a mare by a neighbor, who consoled him by
telling him it was better to have sex with a horse than to violate
virgins or go around raping women.  This incident rings true and would
seem to give support to Kinsey's data about farm boys.  Sex with
animals was part of growing up for many of them.

Girls, on the other hand, according to Kinsey, had far fewer animal
contacts than boys, whether they lived in rural or urban areas.

He found that girls on farms were even kept from observing the breeding
of animals, and as a result were far less interested in animal
sexuality than boys.

Still, about 16 percent of the females in the Kinsey group reported
that they had experienced an erotic response when observing mating
animals,4 about half as many as reported in the male sample.

Among females who did have such contacts, household pets were usually
the source.  Only thirteen females in the total sample of 5,793 females
had reached orgasm more than three times with animals at the time of
the study, although one female had reached orgasm perhaps nine hundred
times!  In spite of this exceptional woman, the -studies on women
emphasize how much reality differs from fantasy since much of the
fantasy literature deals with women having sex with animals when, in
fact, few do.  Like so many other forms of variant sexual behavior, it
is men who are usually involved or in the case of animal contacts,
boys, since few adult males continue sexual liaisons with animals.

This is what makes the Horseman such a valuable book.  It helps the
reader understand that the narrator, who loves and has sex with a pony,
is not an ogre, not a monster, but rather a person who struggled to
come to terms with what he is.  Even though the author engages in
sexual behavior that is not socially sanctioned, he eventually comes to
live a useful and, in some ways, even a happy life.  The pseudonymous
Mark Matthews tells us better than any case study can do, how he came
to recognize what he is.  This confession, from a man who was once a
minister, was married, and fathered two children, is somewhat
fictionalized in that the dialogue is not recorded but recreated.

Nonetheless, it has the ring of authenticity.

One of the points the book demonstrates is how, all too often in our
society, there is a wide gap between the sexes.  I am not certain the
author ever came to understand that women are real persons, that they
have feelings and thoughts of their own, which are very similar to
those of men, and that they are neither saints nor sinners, but simply
people.  Unfortunately, ' ideas about the opposite sex are common among
adolescent boys, and many of them do not change their opinions as
adults.  This is a tragedy of major proportions in our society and
Matthews' solution is perhaps only an extreme variant of what other men
have adopted.

I believe that The Horseman represents an honest attempt of a man to
come to terms with what he is.  This is one of the purposes of
Prometheus' series on sexual autobiography, of which this book is a
part.  Matthews portrays the basic thought processes involved in
ultimately deciding to take a pony as a sexual partner, and gives us
descriptions of animal-human sexual contacts that few of us have ever
contemplated before.  Moreover, the author's ability to come to terms
with himself has led him to try to help others, who want and need help,
to form groups of similarly interested people by means of a computer
network.  Perhaps as some of these- previously unknown people come
forward, we will come to understand even better the varieties of human
sexuality.

I strongly recommend the book to my colleagues in the helping
professions; I think it will give them new insights and
understanding.

I also recommend it to any reader who is trying to understand some of
the greater mysteries of human sexuality.

Notes 1. Nathaniel B. Shurtteff, ed Records of the Colony of New
Plymouth ('Boston: Published by order of the General Court, William
White, Printer to the Commonwealth, 1855-61), vol.  2, p. 44, and
William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston: Wright and
Potter, 1898), vol.  2, p. 44.

2. I am indebted to Martha Comog and Timothy Perper, "Bestiality,"
in Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia, edited by Vem L.

Bullough and Bonnie Bullough (New York: Garland Publishing Company,
1994), pp.  60-63, for many of these references.

3. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior
in the Human Male (Philadelphia: W. B.: Saunders, 1948), pp.

667-78.

4. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, and Paul
Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: W. B.:
Saunders, 1953), p. 504.

Iq Acknowledgments This was not an easy book to write, and I
could not have done it without the support of some very special
friends.  First, to the people of the FidoNet computer network WRITING
echo, especially P. C. D E. H D. H D. F B. S. M J.

L D. McF and other denizens of that electronic neighborhood
tavern-thanks for the help and encouragement you gave so generously as
I progressed from attempting to tell my story in the inappropriate
venue of men's magazines to following your suggestions to put it in
book form.  Thanks also to Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University
Teaching Hospital for suggesting Prometheus Books as a publisher.

Special thanks to two little ponies who have made my life worth
living.

Thanks to local friends who see beyond my oddity.

And last, but certainly not least, my thanks and love go to my mother,
who, while she doesn't approve of my lifestyle, still accepts me as her
son and loves me as only a mother can.

I am grateful to all of you.

September 1992

CHAPTER ONE April 1987

The question was "why?"

It had circulated in the man's mind night and day for almost a year.

Why was he the way he was, so different?

Why had all these terrible things happened to him?  Why.?  He was a
nice man.  Why?  Whether driving, repairing a piece of electronic gear,
eating, or sleeping, it didn't matter.  Lately, the question of "why"
seemed to be coming to a head; it formed an undercurrent in his mind,
flowing more and more strongly, an undertow threatening to pull him
down into the depths of the sea of despair.  Thus began another lonely
night....

He sat in the darkened room at a well-aged oak desk, scarred by heavy
usage with cigarette-burn character marks on the edges, a small lamp
casting a puddle of light on the left side.  The computer screen
centered before him was filled, the modem active, connecting him with
others around the United States.

James Falabella chuckled to himself as he read the words flowing across
the face of the monitor.  MR.  MASTER was describing a blind date the
previous weekend; he took a woman to a steak and ribs joint, not
knowing she was a strict vegetarian-the results were embarrassingly,
predictably funny.

These were his friends, although he didn't even know their real
names.

They went by "handles" or aliases.  ROB 37, MR.  MASTER, HONEYBUNS, and
others came and went in the early morning hours as his online computer
service ticked up at the rate of six cents per minute.

James's handle was POLKA PONY, selected with private irony.

ROB 37 and HONEYBUNS were on their regular topic again, arguing about
women's liberation, equal opportunity, and custody rights in American
divorce.

This unwelcome reminder of his own status diminished James's good
humor.  Those two would be going at it for a few minutes, typing their
comments in on their own keyboards, hitting the "Return" keys on their
Commodore computers, then waiting for QuantumLink's mainframe system in
Virginia to acknowledge their inputs and print them to the screens of
all those faceless people across the country watching or
participating.

James had time.  He always had time.  He would always make time.

Time for another small dose of forgetfulness.

James's eyes strayed to the left of his keyboard.  There, in the pool
of light from the lamp, lay a large, stainless steel berry spoon
containing a pool of orange liquid with a chalky sediment on the
bottom.

He picked up a 1-m insullin syringe, glancing around to be sure the
doors and curtains in his room were closed.  He was fairly sure that
his elderly parents were fast asleep in the other end of the house, but
there was no use taking chances.

- This is stupid.  I don't want to do this."  Why am I doing this when
I don't want to?  Put it down.  Down, damn it!  I won't do this!

I wont' I wont' His hands ignored his mind and, with skills learned by
long practice, they quickly but carefully removed the cap guarding the
needle, pulled a wisp of cotton from a swab, rolled it into a,tiny ball
and laid it at the edge of the orange puddle.

James's face froze into a mask of concentration as he gently slid the
spoon to a position directly in front of him without disturbing the
liquid enough to slop over the tiny cotton ball and bring it sliding
uselessly into the insoluble trash at the bottom of the pool.

Divorce.  Thirty-six years old and divorced, or about to be-as soon as
James's estranged wife could afford to pay her attorney the rest of his
fee, which he wisely demanded in advance, as soon as she could return
to court from the western Kansas town where she and the children had
moved.

She just left Didn't tell me she was thinking of leaving didn't say
anything until she already had another job lined up, and an apartment
rented.  Almost sneaked away as if afraid of what I would do if I found
out too soon.  That's stupid!  I've never hurt her or the children,
although God knows I felt provoked often enough; I never raised a hand
to her, much less hit her.  Why did she always think the worst of
whatever I said, whatever I did, even though her prejudiced view was
usually proven wrong?

children, if sometimes a little distant.  It must be her parents, those
bluenosed, self-styled Christians.  It had been hate at first sight
between James and the Joneses.  "Poseurs," or whatever the French word
is-appearance is more important than reality.  Snobs who have little
except their own illusions.

Why drugs.?  Why misuse and abuse the legal prescription necessary for
him to lead a reasonably normal life?  Especially since he didn't even
get that big a kick, that much euphoria, from it?

There were easy, pat answers to these questions to be found in any
number of magazines, on countless television talk shows, from the
"self-help" racks in bookstores; James wasn't confident that they
applied to him with any degree of accuracy.

They talk about sharing, about communications.  Sweet Christ on a
crutch, I tried to communicate, but it was like I was talking a foreign
language!  If I ran down to the store for a pack of smokes and
thoughtfully brought back a bottle of pop and a bag of her favorite
potato chips, I was trying to sabotage her diet If I didn't, I was
selfish and thoughtless!

If I complimented her on her outfit then I obviously meant to imply
that she normally dressed like a slob.  If I didn't then i didn't care
enough to notice.  I couldn't win.

And the drugs?  I've tried meetings, books, counselors-the best I ever
got was that I am "trying to run away from my pain."  No shit These
were the easy "whys."  There remained one big question, and James
somehow knew that when he found the answer to that one, the rest would
fall into place.

Why the siren song deep within him, unacknowledged, ignored, denied for
ten years, that tried to lure him back to adolescent practices, back to
his earliest loves, back to the rustic settings of farm and field,
stable and pasture, manes and tails gracefully flowing in the wind?

James picked up the syringe and closely inspected the tip to make sure
it was still sharp.  He wet a thumbnail and dragged the point lightly
across the pink surface, feeling for any hint of drag that would
indicate that it had turned a flip, waiting to snag and tear a delicate
vein wall.

It couldn't have been drugs that ruined his marriage-after all, he had
been sober when the breakup started.  James hadn't discovered the
temporary peace to be found by injecting his prescription medicine
until Sheila first left on 'vacation" that previous summer.  He became
suspicious when he was cleaning the house in her absence and discovered
a crumpled sheet of paper containing a list of schools that needed
speech therapists, her specialty.  They were all in Kansas, closer to
her parents.

He already knew that the relationship was in trouble.  No sex in over a
year-James and Sheila slept in rooms at opposite ends of the house.  He
had moved himself out of their bedroom to avoid the frustration of the
constant rejection of his amorous advances.

That's one thing the books have right Sex isn't everything in a
marriage, but it's sure as hell important!  At first it was the old
standards: "I'm tired."  "I have a headache."  "Tomorrow" But soon
"tomorrow" quit coming, and so did I. I even quit trying.  She didn't
want to make love; she pretended to be asleep but "awoke," furious, if
she felt the bed shake as I masturbated out of sheer frustration.

Soon, it was more comfortable to fall asleep in the old recliner beside
the bed.  Then it was easier still if I kept working late in my shop
here at the other end of the house until I knew she really was asleep,
easier still if I just came inside and fell asleep on the couch in the
family room.  What a name for a room.  What "family"?  Shit!

Sheila told him he was evil, that if he didn't honestly join an
acceptable church and promise to raise their children in a "decent
Christian environment," then he was no father, no husband, and no
good.

-The script was set, well-rehearsed, constantly repeated.  James
remembered it all too well: "I won't have my children raised in a bad
atmosphere.  They need church, they need a good spiritual background.

 When they grow up then they can make the choice to keep their
religious training or reject it" "Really?  The same way you did?  When
they grow up, it's too late!

You will have already brainwashed them, and they'll be so deep in some
preacher's garbage can they may never have the strength to climb
out!"

"It didn't hurt me, and it would do you a lot of good to come back
before it's too late!  Rejoin the church and maybe we can be a family
again."  bull Even that didn't work no matter how hard I bit my tongue
and gagged down the lies I heard from the pulpit-the same lies I once
told others.

James's hands trembled at the recollection.  He took three deep breaths
to refocus his attention on the task at hand.  turning the syringe so
that the slanted opening in the end of the needle pointed downwards, he
lowered it to the saturated cotton and lightly pressed down.  With a
delicate touch, he withdrew the plunger slowly, slowly, to avoid
forming too many tiny bubbles.  He filled the barrel with the liquid.

When it was full, James held the syringe upright and tapped it with a
fingernail to dislodge those few bubbles which form no matter how much
care anyone uses.  They floated to the top, and James pulled the
plunger back a bit more to create an air gap.  A few more gentle taps
merged the bubbles into one air space which he could expel without
wasting any of the precious drug-laced fluid.

James laid down the ready syringe and reached for the short cord with
the loop in the end.

How could Sheila start demanding such a thing?  When we married almost
ten years ago I made no secret of my pagan beliefs.  In fact she was
enthusiastic about them at firs joining me in the traditional sky clad"
nude dances within the enchanted circle; she showed no jealousy as I
exchanged the ritual kisses and caresses with other women in the group,
seemed to enjoy the same with the men there.  After all, these were
trusted friends, and there wasn't anything sexually unfaithful about
the actions.  We remained true to each other, reveling in the glories
of oneness with a group reaching out to touch the Essence, the Power,
the Gods themselves.

The Old Religion, Wicca, the Craft of the Wise, White Witchcraft call
it what you will, it's a loving nature religion based on humanity's
ancient ties to the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of the
race.

Some ignorant fools called it "Devil Worship," but the faith was
ancient before the Zoroastrians first formulated the notion of an
anti-Creator of nearly equal power.  We worship no figure of evil; the
fact that our Cod, slightly subordinate to the Goddess, is often
depicted with horns has nothing to do with Satan.  But try to get
through the stony heads and closed minds of some people.

In the circle, we celebrated our relationship to the earth, the sun,
the moon, and the Creative Essence of the universe.  It was beautiful,
joyful, leaving us closer to each other and all of Creation.

We revered the Earth Mother and the feminine creative force.

But now it is "Evil"?

That was the influence of her parents.  Perhaps her mother could have
accepted his paganism under other circumstances, but the old man, a
retired minister like James's father, could never forgive or forget the
fact that James himself had preached for a year from a pulpit in his
own denomination, then turned his back on the church in deliberate
apostasy.

- Her parents... every time she visits them-the constant innuendoes,
the sly questions... damn their rust-stained, black-hearted, petty
souls!

James threaded the end of the cord through the loop, then slid it over
his left hand, up to the biceps.  He pulled his sleeve up far enough to
leave the field clear, then positioned the loop-end on the outside of
the arm.  He took up the slack in the cord, then pulled tighter.

Clenching his left fist, he flexed at the elbow, pumping the veins into
distension.

James took the cord between his teeth to maintain the tension, left arm
stretched out straight in front of him, the light revealing thin red
scars that traced the paths of three veins that passed near the surface
inside the elbow.  He took a perverse craftsman's pride in the fact
that no -bruises showed under the skin.  He was very good with a
needle, never tearing his veins, always using good, sharp, new rigs.

He held the barrel of the syringe between thumb and ring finger  as he
felt under the skin to confirm the location of a good vein.

Finding one, he held his breath to minimize random muscular movement
and slipped the needle through the skin.

Feeling the slight resistance lessen as the point penetrated the vein,
he then pulled back on the plunger with index and middle fingers.

He sighed with pleasure as the thin stream of blood shot into the
orange fluid, once more proving his skill.

James relaxed his fist, then let go of the cord with his teeth.  A
little pull on the plunger and another jet of blood confirmed that the
needle hadn't pulled out of the vein during the change from distension
to relaxation.

Then the fingertip on the end of the plunger, pushing in, emptying half
the contents of the syringe into the bloodstream, pausing, then pulling
back out to refill the syringe with blood, pushing halfway back in
again, then refilling again.

"Triple-boosted," in the parlance of drug abuse, the injection was
finally completed and James withdrew the needle with a flick of his
wrist.

The injection was not particularly strong, containing less than one
milligrain of dextroamphetamine sulfate, brand-name Dexedrine.

Speed.

Pharmaceutical-grade dope.

James settled back for a moment as the light rush of stimulation came
and passed.  He was beyond the point of experiencing the drastic boost
to heart rate, the slamming impact on his senses and thoughts that came
with the first injection of speed.  Now, after hundreds-even
thousands-of times, the ritual of the injection itself was far more
important to him than the direct effect of the drugs.

He knew that even at this diluted rate he was killing himself, but
didn't really care.  He just wanted to draw the process out as long as
possible.

As he rinsed the syringe with fresh water, squirting the contents into
his mouth to get the last speck of drugs, James noticed that ROB 37 had
addressed a comment to him.

He tapped on his keyboard and, after a moment, his reply appeared on
the screen, echoed back through the telephone lines from the remote
mainframe computer system.

"POLKA PONY: Yeah, Rob, life's a bitch, and then you marry one!"

There.  That would get a chuckle from ROB and further incense HONEYBUNS
... but not too much.  She was a good sport.

James enjoyed the contact with his electronic friends.  They were as
safe in their anonymity as he was in his.  The most another user on the
system could ever find out without being deliberately told was what
town he lived in.  No real names, no addresses, no phone numbers.

He could, as could they, reveal his innermost feelings and deepest
secrets if he wished; no repercussions could fall on him.  Truth or
lies, it didn't matter.  He could become whatever he wished through his
little Commodore computer-or he could remain superficial, letting the
merest hint of himself show through.

HONEYBUNS responded, "Oh, yeah, POLKA HORSE'S ASS?

Just let me get to Missouri, and I'll show you bitch,'you dickless
wonder!"

James smiled.  He knew she didn't mean it, any more than he did.

Probably less.  Within the hour they might be in a "private room" on
the commercial communications service, typing out their fantasies to
each other as they pretended to be together, having wild and tacky
sex.

One or both might be masturbating as they sat in front of their
respective screens, or just enjoying anonymous electronic sexual
fantasies at 1200 baud.  Maybe HONEYBUNS would play his favorite game
again where he was a mighty stallion, she the dainty Flicka...

Lately James found his best friends on the computer.  There, nobody
laughed at your appearance.  They never knew.  You were safe.

If no one knew you, no one could hate you for what you really were, for
your dark, hidden side.  It was all just electrons, photon-image
ripples flowing across a screen.  Those couldn't hurt you, stab you in
the back after you made yourself vulnerable.  Conflicts could be
resolved with the flick of a switch.

It wasn't what James wanted, not really.  He craved sex, he had needed
orgasm at least daily since before puberty.  Computer sex, phone sex,
porno movies and books-all provided some measure of relief, relief that
was, if not socially ideal, at least socially acceptable.  What he
really wanted was not ... not normal, not polite, not ...

 I want sex, a woman.  A woman with a great body.  Yeah.  I want her
to keep her mouth shut except when I tell her to open it I want
intimacy ... and to know she will love me whatever I do ...

BULLSHIT!  I'm scared to death of any kind of emotional relationship
with a woman; Sheila really burned me hard.  Dammit I can't enjoy
hookers, what with herpes and AIDS running around!  Those news reports,
the people wasting away to nothing with smiles on their faces, they
terrify me...

I want sex.  I don't want guys, I don't want women.  Shit I know what i
really want No!

I don't want that No.  That really would make me what they-those people
in the books-say I am.  It would justify them.  That's not what I want
It isn't No.

Baloney.  Remember last week when you went to that little peckerwood
country church?  All those folks in the dirt-poor village with all
those horses and ponies in pens?  Some of them must be for sale ...

it's not very far away...

. I don't care!  That's not what I want I want to be normal, to be a
husband and a father to my kids-to just do what everyone else does,
feel like everyone else feels.want what everyone else wants.  I want my
ranch-style house in the suburbs, a normal forty-hour-a-week job, big
color TV, a microwave oven.  I want to look forward to football season,
enjoy a baseball game, fish, golf, drink beer with the guys.

Crap!  TV football's for idiots with jockstraps holding their brains
in; I'm no athlete-I'm a thinker.  I don't want to be normal, but I
wish I did want that-it would make life a lot easier.

What I want is ... unacceptable...

Seven hours later, James exhausted the contents of the spoon and his
drug-ravaged body demanded rest.  It was 4:00 A.M. He shut down the
power on his computer, turned out the lights, stripped, and staggered
to the couch that had served as his bed for two years.  He hoped that
he was tired enough to go directly to sleep, but such an anodyne was
not in store; his mind was still too stimulated to let go.

In the darkness, with no distractions, the questions returned: How had
his life become such a mess?  What was so special about him that he
seemed to be singled out for God to shit all over?  Dammit, he was a
nice guy!  Maybe if I had just said ...

Is it the narcolepsy?  I know she was really pissed when Diane was
born.  She was in labor in the hospital, and I kept dropping off to
sleep in the chair by her bed.  I just felt so weak ... of course, I
didn't know at the time that I had it and it's accompanying
cataplexy.

That last little gem makes life hell!  Every time i feel a strong
emotion, i lose strength in my voluntary muscles, sometimes to the
point of helpless collapse.

First I began going to sleep when talking to customers-I'd stop in the
middle of a word and stare into space.  I didn't even know I'd done it
sometimes.  When the same thing happened while talking to Sheila, she'd
get upset claiming I didn't care what she was saying.

After I was finally diagnosed, it was easy to see that I had a few
early symptoms as far back as sixth grade.  Whenever I'd get mad enough
to fight with another kid, it was as if I was trying to swing my fists
and arms through molasses.  I just thought it was the adrenalin.  But
looking forward from there, I realize that I quickly learned to "keep
my cool-to avoid those weakness attacks.  I don't laugh hard, I don't
get mad easily, I feel remote from hurt from pain whether physical or
emotional Mostly.  Oh, I have the emotions, all right!  But I keep them
buried and far away.  I can observe them and think "That's funny," or
"I'm mad," but it's an intellectual awareness.  I don't dare let myself
really feel these things.  "Flatline."  That's how one of my friends
described me.  Never too happy, never too sad.  Not on the outside.

Somewhere deep inside I scream, I cry, I hurt God, how I hurt!

But i can't show it If I do, I collapse, helpless, at the mercy of
fate, the mercy of ... them.

Last time I went along to visit her parents, they were there.  One
brother and his wife I already knew and detested.  The other one I had
seen only briefly at our wedding.  This time, we were going to stay for
a week out in the country.  Surrounded by Sheilas family, those
miserable, stuck-up bastards!  I was nervous, never feeling welcome,
never "good enough" to be a part of their family.  Bastards.  They were
polite, of course.

They'd never fail in that It wouldn't be good for their image.

We got there in the late evening.  This was before I knew about 
cataplexy.  The drive had been long almost ten hours in the van with
two infants.  Everyone was sitting in the living room looking
ultrarespectable.  We brought in our suitcases and children, then I sat
down in a big easy chair.  Conversation turned to me, with little
smirks seen from the corners of my eyes as these "beautiful people"
looked me over.

Jeans and a two-pocket shirt Wellington boots, belly fat spilling over
my belt and stretching buttons, baseball cap on my head.  I didn't
care.

I didn't think I did, anyway.

I don't recall the specific incitent maybe it was just general tension,
but I had an attack Eyes half-closed, I settled back in the chair, limp
as a wet noodle.  Sheilas brother Bill was the first to notice.

"Hey, James, tuckered out?"  He stood and waved a hand in front of my
face.  I could hear him, I was awake, but i couldn't move a muscle.

That scared me.  "Let's get some family pictures, whaddaya say?"

Bill got his camera out and squatted near my feet Oh, the picture was
funny, all right Shot on a straight line from my knees up to my nose, I
looked like King Kong in casual dress, nostrils flaring, jaw slack,
mouth open with a little drool leaking out of one corner The others
laughed as I raged, helpless.  I couldn't so much as twitch or make a
noise.  Bill took my cap off my head and turned it around, then picked
up a child's baby doll.  He took my arm and moved it across my belly as
Bob, the older brother, joined in the act He picked up a cloth diaper
and swaddled the doll in it then they placed the bundle in my arm and
stood back to take more pictures, Bill shooting 35mm, Bob with a movie
camera recording the whole scene as sisters-in-law and Sheila's parents
(and Sheila) giggled delicately.  I wanted to kill them all at that
moment While they thought I slept I was learning what they really
thought of me-a buffoon, an object of scorn and ridicule.

But I could do nothing about it The clowning continued for a while
until they became bored.  Eventually I did doze off long enough for my
emotions to come back under control That was the first time cataplexy
really scared me, because I didn't know what was going on.  All I
really knew was that I was helpless and they took advantage of it!  I'm
sure my cataplexy-inspired emotional calm bugged Sheila, even though
she tried her best to understand.  Once she said, "I can't make you
feel anything!"  Maybe that's why she started trying to make me mad-she
gave up on making me laugh, or making me show sadness, or pathos, or
enthusiasm ... anger was all that was left Damn.

And I'm so hard to anger, she had to really try!  Spending the mortgage
payment on chintzy metal shelves for Doug's room that time so I had to
borrow money from my sister, simply quitting her part of our audiometer
calibration business-without telling me-anything she could think of to
get my goa just to get some sort of rise out of me.

Frustrated by the endless, year-old litany of self-questioning and
recrimination, James wrapped the blanket tighter about himself as he
turned his face to the sofa back.  To escape the repetition, he turned
his thoughts to his childhood, seeking some clue to the last, the most
puzzling "why."

Why did he have this strange sexual obsession that hadn't loosened its
grip in twenty years?

Why am I so weird?  Nobody planned it that way.  Certainly I didn't.

CHAPTER TWO March 1951

The Reverend Antonio Falabella stood at the church podium that Sunday
evening a nervous man, curly black hair shining with hair cream above a
strong face, blue eyes contemplating the people he had served for the
past eight months as he strove to conceal his uneasiness behind a calm
facade.  This was his first Quarterly Conference as a newly ordained
minister and his wife was in labor with their fourth child.

The district superintendent, the pastor's immediate superior, would
be'receiving the reports of the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, the
Board of Trustees, the Sunday School superintendent and, it seemed,
everyone else in the northeast Kansas town.  This would be the first
evaluation of his new career as a preacher.  A career that was second
choice in his dreams.

The worry over his wife compounded his anxiety.  Doctors had warned
them to stop after the first two girls, and Mrs. Falabella had put on
so much weight this time, and it had been over seven years since their
last child.

Dad always wanted to be a doctor.  He was born on a red-dirt Oklahoma
farm, lived there a few years, then grew up in a blacksmith shop in
Kansas.  He was good-he built his own arc welder, one of the first in
that part of the state-and was soon certified for high-pressure steam
and bridge welding.  He could design and make almost anything on a
lathe or mill, but being the best machinist welder, or millwright in
Kansas City wasn't good enough for him, not a big enough chance.

He loved people and loved the mysteries of medicine, but the money for
medical school just wasn't available, not with three little kids.

And Mom refused to try to support him in his quest She would, however,
scrimp and struggle for him to go through divinity school She said it
was "better to save souls than lives."  Dad would have made a good
doctor, maybe a better one than a preacher.

That didn't stop Antonio from reading and learning as much medicine as
he could.  The knowledge he had gained did little to comfort him now,
knowing more than most laymen about just how much could go wrong in the
delivery room.

The meeting dragged on through the afternoon and evening, the reports
had been made, and they were heading for the closing prayer when the
doors in the back of the sanctuary opened and one of the local
sheriff's deputies stepped inside and waved to Reverend Falabella.

"Preacher, it's a boy!  Big'lln!  Almost twelve pounds, but everyone's
doin' just fine!"  all thoughts of closing prayers vanished as the
members and the district superintendent competed for the honor of
offering first congratulations to the happy father.  A son!

An impromptu collection was quickly gathered, and the D.S. even kicked
in ten dollars, a goodly sum at the time.  While the crowd would have
gladly stayed for another hour, Reverend Tony headed for the door.

Just before he made good his escape toward the hospital, the chairman
of the Board of Trustees stopped him and handed him a twenty.

The old farmer looked the preacher in the eye with a twinkle in his.

"Reckon ya got yuh a little preacher there, he said?"

A quick pause for thought, then a nod.  "Just could be, Jasper!"

Then he was gone.

May 1960 Church was boring.

Jimmy sat in the front pew, fidgeting between the watchful eyes  of
his father from behind the pulpit in front and those of his mother from
the first bench back.

His best friend, Johnny Mason, sat next to him.  They had already
played 'connect the dots," using up all the blank space on the Sunday
bulletin.  Neither had brought any small toys; they would have been
confiscated.

Johnny was fiddling with his candle lighter/snuffer on the bench beside
him, idly running the wick in and out of the shaft.  Little Jimmy again
reached up and scratched his neck.  The starch in the white acolyte's
robelet always made him itch.

The sound of the organ brought his attention away from the collar.

Good!  The sermon was over.  One last hymn, then the benediction ...

The two boys picked up their implements and walked solemnly up onto the
chancel, where they stood in all their childish dignity at either side
of the altar while the hymn droned on through four verses.

Jimmy liked being a candle-lighter.  He would have had to sit in the
front with his mother anyway.  This way he got to sit with a friend,
and bask in the congregation's attention and the envy of other children
as they led his father into the sanctuary each Sunday morning then back
out again at the end.

While they stood waiting, Jimmy admired the shiny candlesticks again.

They were a beautiful bronze, triangular cross-section, tapered from
a small point at the bottom where they rested in mahogany bases to a
large top drilled for the candles.

Two years before, when the old church burned down while he and his
family were on vacation, Jimmy's father had salvaged the pieces of the
mighty bell.  After carving a sample shape from wood, Rev.  Tony
Falabella proceeded to dig a pit in the earth and fill it with
charcoal.

A pipe led through a trench from the bottom of the pit to an old vacuum
cleaner.  He put a crucible in the charcoal, lit it off, then started
the motor, forcing air from the outlet into the fire.

Jimmy was interested but a bit wary as the flames shot up around the
rough black pot, melting the chunks of bronze.  "Okay, son, watch!

I'm going to make the mold for the candlesticks now."

Tony took his wooden pattern and pressed it into the damp surface of
the sand in a form-box, covered it with the other half, then carefully
separated them and removed the pattern.

I remember how the flames and heat frightened me.  The vaccuum cleaner
motor screamed like a siren; it had no casing around it to deaden the
noise.  The flames shot up around that crucible, blue and white, making
me think of images of Hell from Sunday SchooL But I loved iL I loved
watching my father work with his hands, even though I had no idea at
the time exactly how good, how remarkably skilled, he was.

I just believed then that he could build anything he wanted to build,
make anything he wanted to make.  I was right Then the time for the
pouring approached.

'Stand back a little more, now.  If any of this metal splashes on you,
it'l burn really bad!"

Tony lifted the crucible with long, wooden-handled tongs.  Resting the
container on the top of a tree stump that immediately smouldered and
smoked, he tilted it and slowly the golden-white liquid poured in a
thin stream through the air and into the hole in the top of the
moldform.

'A-men, a-men, ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh-men!"  The first notes of the
choir,ought Jimmy out of his reverie and, exchanging eye-signals, the
two boys smoothly coordinated the snuffing of the five candles arranged
along the back of the altar, then, as the last, drawn-out "amen"
finished, the two larger ones in front.

As the organist began playing the postlude they raised their lighter/
snuffers together, turned, and strode with childish dignity down the
chancel steps, the Rev.  Falabella falling in behind them.

The congregation of well-to-do farmers and businessmen and their
families came to their feet in the brand-new rural church building,
standing silently until the small procession led by the young boys and
trailed by the choir in their purple robes passed through the double
doors at the back of the sanctuary.

As soon as they made good their escape from another week's hour of
enforced good behavior, Jimmy and Johnny ran to the furnace room, where
they hung up their waist-length robelets and leaned the lighters in the
corner.

'See ya outside," said Johnny as he made for the door.

"Yeah, soon as everybody is out."

Jimmy wasn't quite free yet.  He had to join his parents at the church
door to finish the process of visiting with parishioners as they left
the service.  He took a shortcut around the outside, and made it just
as the congregation began leaving the building.

"Nice service, preacher!"

"Thanks, Bill."

"Oh, I just love the story of Lazarus, and you do it so nicely."

"Thank you, Mrs. Koennikker.  I like to think it has a lot to teach us
even today."

'Reverend, I wanted to thank you for remembering my mother in the group
prayers today."

"Certainly, Mr. Carstairs.  I expect to be in town tomorrow; I'll be
sure and visit her at the nursing home."

Jimmy stood proudly beside his mother in his hand-me-down blue suit as
all the important people paid their respects to his father.

Suddenly a bent and wizened woman stopped in front of Jimmy and reached
for his hand, taking it in both of hers.

"You and John Morgan sure look grown-up in your white robes!

Are you going to be a preacher like your daddy.?"

Little Jimmy swelled with pride.  'Yes, Granny Abelsen!  I want to be
just like him!"

Not really.  How could I know at that age?  What I wanted was the
respect the same admiration I felt for him.  I wanted to please him, to
hear him say he was proud of me.

Reverend Tony smiled to himself as old Grandma Abelsen exchanged a
pleasantry with his wife before stopping to tell him about her latest
attack of 'the arthur-it is."

Most of the people didn't go far-just out to their cars in the parking
lot, where they reached into trunks and back seats and pulled out
picnic baskets, paper bags, and cooking dishes wrapped in cozies or
dishtowels, then reentered the church and went to the fellowship
hall.

While the 30 men set up folding tables, the church women unrolled wide
white paper for tablecloths and started laying out the food on two
tables pushed together nearest the kitchen.

The children ran around underfoot until shooed away.  Two girls sat at
the piano, enthusiastically if not skillfully banging out a duet of
"Heart and Soul."

Jimmy and Johnny went outside to join the rest of the boys.  Mark,
Randy, Gene, and David were organizing a game of tag.

I hated tag or any other game that involved running or sustained
physical effort I was already getting pretty chubby, and couldn't run
very fast or for very long.  i hoped it wouldn't last what I really
wanted to do was get to the church dinner.

A hand slapped Jimmy.  'Tag, you're it!"

'Hey," he protested, "no fair!  I wasn't looking!"

The protest carried little weight with the others, so Jimmy ran as best
he could while the others eluded him.  It looked hopeless until Randy's
little brother, Steven, wandered into the group.

"Tag!"  shouted Jimmy, running for "free base," the old cedar tree
between the parsonage and the church.

Randy protested this time: "Stevie's too young to play tag with us!"

"I don't care.  Tag's a little kid's game, anyway.  Let's go to my
treehouse!"

This suggestion met with the approval of the group.  They all ran south
past the parsonage to the big old elm tree beside the garage where
Jimmy's dad had built a fancy treehouse with a ladder up the side of
the tree that led through a hole in the floor.  The treehouse was
unenclosed, just a platform with a railing, but there were big branches
spreading out; Jimmy had nailed steps onto them and built smaller
platforms where they leveled out.  From one of these, you could climb
down onto the corrugated steel roof of the garage, so there was plenty
of room "up top" for a large gang of kids.

Jimmy kept a bucket of rocks up there in case of attack by gangs of,
pirates, Indians, outlaws, Nazis, Japs, Communists, racketeers, or
girls.  Good thing, too, because three girls were coming toward the
tree.

The Greene sisters disaster!

"Piggies coming!"  Johnny sounded the alarm.  At the warning, all seven
boys grabbed for rocks and prepared to defend their inviolate elevated
territory.

The Greene sisters!  Ugh!  They lived on the Missouri River with their
father and grandmother, and they always smelled awful Harley, their
father, owned a lot of river-bottom land that he rented out to farmers
on shares; he was filthy rich in the truest sense-not crazy, for
"eccentric" is the term used if you have enough money-he and his family
dressed in cast-off rags and rarely bathed.  Their house looked like a
sharecropper's house with rubbish and garbage piled all around in
untidy heaps, both indoors and out When I was a kid, I thought they
were just more poor people that my father ministered to.  it was years
later that I found out Harley Greene was a multimillionaire.

Alma Greene, the oldest of the three, stopped before she got to the
ladder and looked up.  "You'd better not throw rocks at us or we'll
tell!"

Although the threat of parental discipline was severe, the boys felt
girls!  They looked down and raised their arms, ready to hurl
lithodestruction at the first girl to set foot on the ladder.

"No girls allowed," shouted Jimmy.  "Treehouse rules!"

Alma put her hands on her hips and pouted up at him.  "We wouldn't want
to come up in any stupid old treehouse, anyway.  We just came to tell
you that they're almost ready to eat.  But stay up there and starve,
for all we care!"

With that they flounced off, trailing an almost-visible cloud of musty
aroma.

Just as soon as the girls were out of sight (the same unwritten code of
honor demanded that boys never let girls think they had influenced
them), there was a mad scramble down the ladder.  One nice thing about
rural church folks was that they always let the children go first in
line.

Mr.  Mason, Johnny's father, had grabbed a ride home with a neighbor.

Mrs. Mason, the organist, was in the church office with Reverend Tony,
planning out next Sunday's music.  It was about 3:00 P.M. , Everyone
else was gone, the afternoon skies -had clouded up and begun to
drizzle; Jimmy and Johnny sat in the Masons'old Ford, parked by itself
in the lot.

Francis Mason was a rarity in this rural community-a poor, struggling
farmer.  While others in the county brought in record crops of wheat
and corn from the incredibly rich lome pushed up twenty to a hundred
feet deep ahead of the glacial till some twenty thousand years
previously, Francis barely eked out a living for himself and his family
raising corn and feeding cattle.

Other farmers had the newest tractors and combines; Francis used prewar
machinery.  Others had new barns and upright silos; his outbuildings
were ramshackle heaps, propped up where necessary, leaky roofs patched
with tarpaper and roofing cement.  While their neighbors had carpeted
living rooms with new color TVs, the Masons still got drinking water
from a hand-pump right outside the back door.  Mr. Mason's
neighbors'neatly maintained farmsteads had good gravel drives and
painted board fences, true to their tidy German heritage; he had mud
runways and alleys with sagging barbed wire, chunks and pieces of
rusting junk machinery scattered here and there.

I thought it was super!  Johnny and I both wore hand-me-downs from
other, more-prosperous children, and our mothers made the few new
shirts we had.  Every year we got three new pairs of jeans for school,
and maybe a new winter coat We shared a bond of medium poverty,
although we weren't really aware of it as children.

- This bond of mutual poverty helped them remain best friends, for
while the church was prosperous, the preacher was not.

When the church burned down two years earlier, while the debris was
cleaned up and a new one built, services were held in the community
building of a small, run-down, nearby Missouri River town where the
Greene family lived.  A little dirt road lead to the top of a bluff
where you stood in Kansas and could see Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa on
a clear day.  James enjoyed the chance to wander the old-fashioned
streets, looking into little stores that had hardly changed from
paddlewheel riverboat days.  The old-fashioned grocery store sold cold
3-V Cola for a nickel a bottle.  These were the first sixteen-ounce
soda bottles James had ever seen, and the pop was okay.

The community building was brick and stone from Depression times: a
large stage at one end with a movie screen that could be cranked up and
down, basketball hoops, bleachers along the sides and rows of wooden
folding chairs set out in the middle, a projection booth up high on the
back wall-it was a Mecca for a young boy.  I'm sure it was also a
relief for the contractor building the new church.  Cleaning the
temporary church with my family on Saturdays kept me off the building
site and out of his hair.  He was also smart enough to "put me on the
payroll" at fifty cents a week thus converting me from wolf to
sheepdog.  A wise man.  This lasted less than a year, until the new,
cathedral-roofed building with a tall, lighted spire was ready.

I didn't realize at the time what a miracle my father had wrought
building a whole new church without losing a single member.  It was an
unheard-of feat in almost any church.  Internal strife and disagreement
over what should be done and how much to spend to do it was and usually
is the norm.  The church was fully paid for before it was finished; the
inaugural service and the mortgage burning were held on the same
Sunday.  The bishop attended and told everyone what a wonderful,
dedicated group they were, and what a fine pastor they had There was a
big dinner that afternoon, too.

In gratitude, the Board of Trustees granted the Falabella family a
raise ... in the small extra wage they were paid for cleaning the
church each week ... a whole $120 more a year.

Jimmy didn't know it at the time, but something began to change in his
father when he realized how empty the words of praise were, how little
the church people really cared for others.  all Jimmy knew this rainy
afternoon was that he was happy to have some extra time with his best
friend.  They talked of the Important Things Of Life, such as whether
Mrs. Blake's apple pie had been as good as usual, and whether or not
it was better than Granny Abelsen's devil's food cake with the sticky
white icing.  They talked about the cartoons on Saturday morning, and
the new show that came on after school with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi
Bear, and comic books.

When those subjects were settled once And For all, the boys moved on to
other matters, such as the relative merits of their BB guns.

Jimmy had an old Red Ryder Daisy lever-action, while Johnny owned one
of the newer pump rifles.  They talked about 'Gunsmoke," and how they
would have caught the outlaws if they'd lived then.  They both wished
they had horses so they could really play Cowboys and Indians.

Then Johnny asked the almost-unspeakable.  "Do you like girls?"

"Great Grunt, NO!"

Jimmy was shocked!  His three older sisters were reason enough, let
alone the way the girls in his class liked to torment boys, teasing and
hitting them, then running to tell the teacher if they dared strike
back.  Girls were something God created to make LIFE miserable for
boys.

"Girls are different," continued Johnny.

"Shoot, I know that!"  Jimmy was scornful.  "They wear dresses and play
with dolls and do dumb things."

"No, I mean they're put together different from boys."

Jimmy considered.  His older sisters were shaped different than their
high-school boyfriends, but he supposed that was just because of
dresses and the extra clothes they wore beneath them.

'Well, they don't shave, I guess.  Except their legs."  Jimmy had not
thought much on the subject.  He supposed that when kids were little,
their parents watched how they acted, then decided which ones were
girls and which boys, and raised them that way.  It made sense to him,
because they had one boy in their class who dressed in jeans and stuff,
but acted a lot like a girl.  His mother was kind of silly, and Jimmy
supposed she had just made a mistake when it came time to choose.

- Johnny laughed at his idea.  "Not just that.  Haven't you ever seen a
girl without clothes on?"

He didn't really remember doing so.  Until the new church was built and
his father moved his office from an upstairs room over to the fine, new
study they built into the church, he shared a bedroom with the younger
two of his three sisters, but he was always in bed asleep before they
came upstairs.  They changed clothes downstairs in the bathroom, and
wore pajamas and robes to bed.  So did he.  Then, when he was just
barely nine, he got a room of his own, the former church office.

I honestly believed then that being a girl or a boy was mostly a matter
of choice.  Once, when my parents were away and I was about six, my
sisters talked me into playing a game.  "Be a girl,- they called it
They dressed me in an old pink pleated shirt with ruffled slips, and
seemed to think that the most important part of "being a girl" was
going to the bathroom like one.  They lifted the skirt and slips up,
pulled down my underpants, and made me sit on the toilet until I peed
and pooped, then made me spread my legs out like a kid and wipe from
back to front the way they did.  I didn't think the game was much fun
and I didn't like "'being a girl," but my sisters seemed to enjoy
staring at me there on the toilet , bare-assed.  I never played that
game with them again.

Jimmy knew Johnny still had to sleep in a room with his older brother
and sister.  Bill, the brother, was kind of a hero to Jimmy: thirteen
years old, he had no time for playing with 'little kids," because he
got to run a tractor!  Jimmy loved machinery!  His favorite toy for
years had been a little International Farmall tractor with pedals and a
steering wheel.  An old farmer in the town where he was born had been
his best grownup friend, sometimes letting Jimmy ride along on his for
real red International Harvester Farmall tractor.

Then, on James's fourth birthday, he came to the door of the parsonage
with a big cardboard box.  When opened, the wonderful toy tractor was
inside!  Old Jasper Sargent blushed yet looked pleased when he saw
Jimmy's eyes light up, and didn't seem to mind that the boy forgot all
about him and immediately took off down the block, pedaling hard and
making "bmrrr-r-r-r!"  motor noises at the top of his voice.

The family moved to the country church -about two months later.

Jimmy never saw the old farmer again, but he made sure that his
precious tractor was the first thing unloaded from the farm trucks that
carried his family's possessions to their new home.

As for Nancy, the oldest of the three Mason children, she was a girl.

That about summed it up for James.  He rarely saw her outside Johnny's
house, either, since she was usually cooking, cleaning, or sewing new
clothes for herself whenever he was there.

"Well, have you?  Seen a girl naked?"

"No, I guess not.  So?"  Jimmy didn't like not knowing something that
someone else did.

'Well, you know your peter?  Girls don't ' have one!"

This took him totally by surprise.  "You're lying," he accused.

"How do they pee.?"

Johnny smiled.  It wasn't often that he could top his friend.

"I've seen my sister!  There's a knothole in the outhouse wall, and she
just has a kind of crack down where a boy has a peter, and it comes out
there."

Well!  This explained a lot to Jimmy.  No wonder girls were pests.

Not being able to pee on an anthill, or write your name in the snow, or
just stand up and see how high you could squirt your stream ... girls
were jealous of boys!

He immediately shared this insight.

"I bet that's right!"  Johnny once again stood in awe of his friend's
superior intellect.  'That's why they want to get boys'peters!"

Jimmy was puzzled.  "What do you mean?"

"Sometimes at night, Nancy gets Bill to come over to her bed.

They think I'm asleep, but I've seen them.  She has Bill get on top of
her, and he rubs his peter against her crack, and sometimes she gets it
to go inside."

"Is she trying to take it away from him?"

"Maybe, I dunno.  If she is, it doesn't work, 'cause he still has it.

Maybe she just kind of borrows it for a little bit."

The thought of losing a part of himself, even temporarily, horrified
Jimmy.  "Why does he do it?"

"Well, I asked him, and he got mad because then he knew I'd been
watching, and made me promise never to say anything to anybody, so keep
it a secret!"  Jimmy nodded agreement.  "He said it feels really good,
rubbing his peter on her crack, and sometimes up inside it."

Jimmy still wasn't sure about this, and Johnny noted his skepticism.

"He showed me.  He rubbed his peter with his hands, and it got big and
stiff, and he started making funny noises like he does when he's with
Nancy, and some stuff came out kinda like he was peeing, but
different.

He said it's the most fun in the world."  Johnny paused a moment for
dramatic effect, then went on.

"I tried it."

"With your sister?"

"Naw!  I tried rubbing mine.  Bill helped me and showed me how.

He even put it in his mouth and kind of sucked on it."

"Nuts!"  Now Jimmy knew he was lying.  "Nobody'd ever put their mouth
where someone pees!"

 "Oh, yeah?"  Johnny was determined to prove his veracity.

"Here, I'll show you!  Take off your pants."

Young James Falabella learned a lot that afternoon; although he never
could bring himself to take a penis in his own mouth, he had his first
dry, prepubescent orgasm, and learned to masturbate.  That skill proved
invaluable, alleviating the boredom of living way out in the country.

CHAPTER THREE April 1987,

the next morning The telephone rang and worked its magic on James.

Without conscious thought he flung off the ratty yellow blanket he
liked to sleep in and arose from the broken-down-but-comfortable couch
he had used for a bed these past two years.

His mental autopilot noting that his bladder was overfull as usual,
James grabbed the cordless handset, pulled out the antenna, took a
bracing breath, and flipped the switch.

"Hello?"  One of James's more useful talents was an ability to talk as
if he had been up for hours even while half-asleep.  In response to the
pressure of Nature's call, he opened the door into his attached
workshop, careful not to let the cat out, then opened the back door,
squinting to sharpen his focus as best he could without glasses,
scanning the neighbor's back yard.  Good.  It was empty.  With a mental
sigh of relief, he let loose a stream, aiming it to one side of the
path so he wouldn't have to walk in it later.

"What?  I'm sorry, I had some noise.  Could you please repeat that?"

"Mr.  Falabella?"

"Yes."

"Do you work on organs?"  An old woman's voice.

"Yes, ma'am, I do.  What's your problem?"

With the pressure relieved, James shook off the last drops, closed the
door, and reached for the pad and pencil he kept handy there.

After noting the details of make and model, address and phone number,
James looked at his watch and made a hasty estimate.

"Okay, I can see you about three this afternoon, give or take half an
hour.  Win that be okay.?"

"Fine, thank you.  See you at three."

It wasn't that Jim got some kind of thrill from peeing outdoors, but he
always slept naked.  Recently it had come to pass that when he
awakened, he knew he only had a moment before he would start
dribbling.

He suspected that might indicate diabetes, but he didn't want to know
it if it did.

Whatever the reason-diabetes, drugs, or the gallon or more of instant
tea he drank every day-he knew he didn't have time to get up, get
dressed in some fashion, and traipse through the house to one of the
bathrooms.

In bygone days, he would have done it naked, carrying the phone along,
but now he usually awoke somewhere around noon, which meant his parents
would be up and about.  Several weeks spent in nudist camps during more
youthful, freer days and dancing nude in ritual coven circles had
removed James's body modesty, but his mother still didn't like it.  Of
course, there were a lot of things that he did whether she liked them
or not, but casual nudity wasn't important enough to him to make an
issue out of it.

In some ways, having his parents live with him was a real pain in the
rear, but they were getting a little old to live by themselves, they
helped a lot with the house payment, and they weren't bad company once
a few ground rules had been established: He did his own cooking and
grocery shopping.  When he was home, James always answered the phone.

James helped them when they needed repairs on their car, or lifting
anything too heavy for them.  He paid all the utilities.  He did his
own dishes and laundry.

More importantly, he was thirty-six years old.  He didn't ten them
where to go and what to do; they didn't tell him.  And no one entered
his ' room without knocking first and receiving permission.  Period.

Nobody.  Not for any reason.  No cleaning, no snooping, nothing.

This was the most important rule as far as James was concerned.

He needed his privacy.  Not only for the drugs, but for masturbation,
or for (sometimes) crying ...

James needed a place to be with himself, a refuge.

James tore off the top sheet from the notepad and carried it with him
back into his room (still careful not to let his aged Siamese cat out),
laid it on the desk, and prepared to meet the world.

Pulling on an old pair of denim shorts, he entered the other part of
the house, showered, shaved, went back to his room to finish
dressing.

Then into the kitchen.

The Right Reverend Antonio Falabella (Associate Member, Kansas East
Conference, retired) sat at the maple dining table that crowded the
little dinette between the kitchen and the living room, reading the
newspaper.

His wife, James's mother, listened to a television soap opera while
washing up their luncheon dishes.

There they are, part of The World-time to start interacting again, I
suppose, but my head hurts, my left arm is sore from all the
punctures.

As usual, they'll give only short polite greetings, respecting the fact
that even the best of awakenings is pure hell for me.  The most I can
do is give a nod and a forced grin; they understand it's not their
fault I'm so surly.  What's in the fridge?  Hamburger, eggs,
hash-browns in the freezer.  Oog.  Too complicated.  Ah, a pot of
leftover chili-Breakfast of Chumps!

Placing the pot on the stove, James extracted a four-ounce tube of
saltines from a box on the shelf above, poured a glass of milk, and sat
at the table.

Respecting his need for silence and his waking moodiness, Tony merely
handed over most of the newspaper and continued reading the obituaries
and classifieds.  By the time James had finished the editorials, advice
column, and the comics, he was starting to feel more human and his
chili was warm.

He officially announced the commencement of conversation by asking his
father, "Anybody you know?"

Tony looked hard at James.  "No, you're not in it.  Not yet."

James colored a little and drew a deep,breath.  It had long been
obvious that his parents knew something was wrong, maybe even what he
was doing, although he was always careful to wear a long-sleeved shirt
or keep his left elbow bent to cover the 'tracks" over his veins.

After all, his father had been addicted to amphetamines when James was
a child; little Jimmy didn't know at the time what that 'mouthwash" his
dad kept sipping at really was.  Not until he entered the world of
drugs, first as a user, then as an undercover agent fifteen years
before, did he learn that this was Dexedrine ekk supplied by a friendly
pharmacist.  His father, while never a main'tine shooter, obviously
knew what to look for in the eyes, the body, the behavior.

James gave his aging father a hard look to indicate "forbidden subject,
back off," but refrained from commenting on his father's approaching
the line too closely.

The hell of it is, I know they love me, they worry about me.

He knew he was killing himself slowly.  That was fine.  He wanted to
die; he just wasn't in a big hurry about it.  He wanted to go out
enjoying himself.

Everything I've studied, Christian or Pagan, tells me that suicide is a
sure route to big trouble in the Afterworld.  And I don't want to use a
gun, or poison, or anything obvious; Suicide by Stupidity-there's a
likely coroner's report!  Some day he might slip up and get an
embolism, whether pneumatic or particulate, or he would insult his
circulatory or nervous systems one too many times, and it would be
over.  The pain would be gone.

The mortgage insurance would pay off the house; he already had the
papers drawn up to give his parents lifetime tenancy, with ownership
reverting to a trust for his children, a trust that Sheila couldn't
break.

So his financial woes would be taken care of, his troubles would be
gone.

Most importantly, "Why.?"  would be over with.  At least he hoped so.

Using drugs was the best thing he could do at the time, the best for
his situation.

Drug addicts develop very good rationalization skills.

Damn.  It was a shitty thing to do, giving Dad a dirty look just
because he cares.  I'd better try to make up for it "I have a service
call this afternoon, Dad.  Want to ride along" His mother said to Tony
before he could answer, "Remember, honey, we have a doctor's
appointment this afternoon at one o'clock."

Tony's face rose at the invitation, then fell at the reminder.  He
especially enjoyed getting out and seeing the countryside on a spring
day; it was something he rarely got to do anymore.  Driving was a real
chore for him after the cataract surgery, peering through the thick
lenses with the sunglasses over them to protect his eyes from the
ultraviolet in the sunshine, and his reaction time wasn't what it used
to be.

"What time, son?"

"Well, it's about fifty miles north, and I'm supposed to be there at
three, so I need to leave before two.  But I could call the lady back
and reschedule it for later."

The more I think about it the more I'd like to have the old fart
along.

"I'm sorry, son.  By the time I'm through sitting around waiting for
the damned doctor, I'll be too tired to make that long a trip.

Maybe another day this week."  Tony Falabella, frustrated in his dream
of being a doctor, was convinced that he knew more than most of those
in licensed medical practice; quite often he was right.

"You be careful out on the highway.  Don't fall asleep and have a
wreck."

"Okay, Mom," replied James with a wry grin.  For some reason, he could
never bring himself to think of her as anything but "Mom."

At times he wondered if he had forgotten her given name.  That's
ridiculous!

Her name is-no, never mind ...

"Oh, I promised Mrs. Wharton down the street that I'd fix her TV
antenna cable sometime soon.  Maybe I'll get back in time to do that
this evening."

"How much are you charging her?"

"Nothing.  She's old, doesn't have much money, and she's a good
neighbor.  Isn't she a friend of yours?"

"Yes, she is.  That's nice of you, son.  We're in Women's Society
together at church and she's had a hard time of it since her husband
died."

"Well, I have plenty of wire out in the shop that I don't need, and she
might as well get some good out of it."

He finished his lunch, put the pan and dishes in the sink to soak, and
reminded her, "Now, leave these here.  I'll wash them when I get back
tonight."  Perhaps it was a matter of clinging to a vestige of
independence, insisting on doing his own dishes.

Perhaps.  Perhaps it was merely a petty cruelty, since James knew the
sight or the thought of dirty dishes just laying there unwashed would
be a major distraction and irritant for his mother.  A miner revenge
given the fact that she was a neat-freak.  Getting back at her
for-what?  He couldn't remember, just that he resented his mother.  The
fact that she was a sweet, gentle, loving woman made him feel guilty
for resenting her, adding that little bit more to his resentment.

James prepared carefully for his trip.  Knowing the make and model of
the organ he was to repair, and knowing the problem, he didn't bother
with a service manual.  He knew what to do.  After loading his toolkit
and some selected parts in the truck, he then made the most important
preparations for the lonely trip.  He shook half a dozen PILLS out of
the prescription bottle, put them in a white ceramic mortar, and
crushed them to a fine powder with the glass pestle.

He opened another desk drawer and removed the stainless steel berry
server, a very large spoon.  He had washed it, wiped it down with
alcohol, and wrapped it in a plastic bag the night before when he was
done with it.

Jim poured the powder into the spoon, then took out a small bottle of
distilled water.  He unsealed a new 3-cc syringe, removed the largebore
needle, and began carefully transferring water from the bottle,
squirting it around the edges of the powder at first until it was
surrounded, then into the pile itself, keeping it up until he had 12
milliliters of water dissolving the six tablets.  When he had finished
that part of the process, he took the still-capped needle and gently
stirred.

Leaving the mixture alone for a bit to allow the insoluble residue to
settle to the bottom, James took a small glass vial from his desk
drawer.  This would hold his "road supply," the preferered drug fix he
would use during his trip.  James sterilized the bottles himself late
at night, first carefully washing them with a strong chlorine bleach
solution, then alcohol, then boiling them on the stove for thirty
minutes.

it sometimes feels ludicrous for a semisuicidal drug addict like me to
take such pains, but it'd be the shits to die from some debilitating
disease instead of what's supposed to kill me.  I guess I'm kinda
particular about my death.  James always bought new syringes from the
drugstore and never shared needles, an effortless discipline since he
didn't hang around with other drug users except at Twelve Step
meetings; his was a solitary vice.

James had mixed feelings about the trip alone as he checked his soft
leatherette shaving kit, which contained a tie-off cord for his arm,
syringes, sterile alcohol swabs in foil packets, and another bottle of
sterile, distilled water.  He finished the preparation of the small
bottle of dissolved, filtered speed, wiped the utensils down with
alcohol, and put them away in his desk for later use.

James's mixed feelings came from opposite needs and wants.  If his
father was with him, he couldn't use the drugs.  However, if Tony
Falabella had come along, he wouldn't necessarily need to take the
drugs.

Tony was well aware of James's involuntary sleep problem, the
narcolepsy for which Dexedrine was the preferred medication, and would
keep a lookout for any sign of dozing off at the wheel.  More
importantly, Tony would be there to talk to.  His son could talk with
him about sex, dirty jokes, science fiction, God, whatever-Tony was a
brilliant old man, capable of conversing about almost anything.

Anything, that is, except James's marital woes.  those James didn't
discuss with anyone.

On balance, he would have rather had the company of his father than a
needle.

James gave himself a quick shot, just to get started, felt the mild
rush that was the remnant of nervous system response left for him after
months of abuse.  The drug itself was now of secondary importance.

True, it did some mild chemical alteration of his mood, and kept him
from drowsing at inconvenient times, but he was aware that he was now
more addicted to the ritual, the act of injection itself, than the
substance contained therein.

James recognized and accepted this shift in emphasis for the symptom of
compulsive neurosis that it was.

He zipped up his bag, his "works," and poked his head through the
floor-length curtains that covered the wide door between his room and
the living room and called, "I'm leaving now.  I should be back before
six."

His mother smiled at him.  "Be careful.  If you feel drowsy, pull over
for a bit!"

James nodded dutifully and withdrew.  Of course, the trouble was that
his drowsiness sneaked up on him before he became aware of it; try as
he might, he never could make that point well enough with his mother to
keep her from giving him the same admonition every time he left.  He
guessed that meant she cared for him as much as ever.

James resented that, too, and he didn't really know why.

He checked his pockets as he stepped out the front door of the shop
with his shaving kit.  Keys, electrician's knife with the locking
screwdriver blade, wallet coins, lucky marble, plenty of cigarettes,
lighter, pen ... got 'em ala Just as he was climbing into the front
seat of his pickup and doing a visual inventory to check for tools,
parts, and the note he had made that morning, he heard the door of the
house to the north open.

"Hey, Jim!"  He cringed a little.  "Waidaminnut!"

Closing the door and putting his keys into the ignition, he rolled down
the window as his neighbor, Tom Sheisskopf, blundered across the lawn
toward him.  Brace yourself Smile.  Look at the man.  Oog.  Wonder what
Shithead wants now?

"Hiya, Tom."The Sheisskopf family was really strange.  Tom couldn't
read, but was a willing and skilled worker with refrigeration, cars,
masonry, and carpentry.  He wasn't a bad guy by himself, but his rather
dull mind was easily influenced by his parents and his wife.

The whole family was constantly feuding with one or another of the
neighbors and everyone on the street politely despised them.  The local
police had a folder two inches thick of complaints that Linda
Sheisskopf had filed on various people over the years, all unfounded.

They shuddered when they heard her nasal whine on the phone.

Once, when the Sheisskopfs were picking on a family three doors south,
Linda called the police and told them that Kurt, the fourteen-year-old
boy, had thrown a large rock through her picture window, and demanded
they arrest him immediately.  With a sigh of resignation, one of the
force of eight set out in his patrol car to investigate.  Upon
arriving, Linda handed him a rugged twenty-pound chunk of limestone and
repeated her demand for an immediate arrest, preferably with some
police brutality.  Patrolman Jan Co proceeded professionally, taking
Linda's report and noting the time frame in which the incident had
occurred.

After checking around, Officer Collins discovered that the accused had
been in school all day, and was at basketball practice with two coaches
and thirty other boys when the window was broken-in fact, he was still
there.

Ignoring the counter-evidence, Linda insisted that Kurt must have done
it, and pressed for further investigation of the cabal at the school
that was providing the boy with a false alibi.  Collins tried to
explain just how unlikely it was that an entire school district had
decided to enter into a criminal conspiracy to break her window, but
Linda was having none of that.

"You take this rock and fingerprint it, or I'll have the FBI down on
the whole department for violating my civil rights of equal
protection!"

Officer Collins briefly considered throwing the rock through Linda's
head, then saluted, placed the rock carefully in the front seat of the
patrol car, and headed back to the station to add yet another entry in
the Sheisskopf Saga.

The cops told me later that they still have that rock down at the PD.

It sits on the chiefs desk an overgrown paperweight Huh.

Sheisskopf If the name had a "c" inserted as the second letter, it
would be spelled German for "shithead."  How appropriate.

Tom was now leaning on the truck door, blowing his hot-dogs
and-sauerkraut breath at James.  "Hey, yknow that ol'Sony tape machine
you worked on fer me?  It's messin' up agin."

"Same thing?."

"Yuh.  The empty reel don't turn right, an'the tape gits messed up."

James sighed.  "Okay, bring it around this evening, and I'll see if I
can tighten that take-up clutch a little more."

"Maybe you can fixer right, this time," Tom said, rather loudly.

"I paid a lot of money for that thing, yknow."  Over Tom's shoulder,
Jim saw Linda standing on the porch, listening; Sheisskopf was
obviously trying to make points with his wife.

Oh, hell.  it looks like it's about my turn, dammit!  They've decided
it's time to fight with me again.  I wish I could just dynamite their
house and be done with it!  Fuck'em!

Just as loudly, but with a polite expression on his face, he replied.

"Well, I told you that part needs to be replaced.  The trouble is that
you bought it at a PX in 'Nam; they never imported that model into the
U.S. and Sony Won't support it with parts over here.  But if you're
unhappy about the job I did last time, I'll refund your money.  How
much did I charge you?"

Tom's face worked as his brain went into low gear for a hard pull
through his mud-mired memory.  "Uh, nuthin'.  . ."

"Right.  And I'll gladly give it back.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I
have to make a service call.  A paying service call."  With that, James
started the engine, grabbed reverse, and backed out onto the street,
leaving Tom and spouse staring at him, Tom confused, Linda with a
pinched expression on her flat, doughy face.  He knew she would be
thinking of some way to get even for the heinous insult of not being
adored and respected.

James felt good.

Damn, I'm glad I stood up to them this time.  I should have done that
from the start A couple years ago, for instance, when Doug was five.

They claimed he sat on their crummy patio table and broke it Sheila got
really pissed because I just paid them for a new one to keep the
peace.

She was right that time.  Turns out that their fat-ass stupid kid,
-same age as ours, sat on it and broke the thing, not Doug.

But that's their style.  Anything that goes wrong can't possibly be
their fault it has to be someone else doing it to them out of some
mysterious, malicious intent Linda was a part-time mail carrier for a
while until her older daughter, a real little slut, bragged one day on
the school bus about reading all the teenage girls' magazines as soon
as they came out She said her mom brought them home, and then delivered
them after she read them.

As soon as certain people heard that story, Linda was out of another
job.  Damned shame they didn't throw the book at her for tampering with
the U.S. mail.

' At leas this time, I didn't just grin and take it They seem to be
getting worse; who knows what'll happen if nobody stops them?

James's elation from standing up to his neighbors lasted for the first
ten miles.  He replayed the scene a few times, savoring the memory of
the put-down.  It irritated him to no end to have those people
complaining about the work he did for free, and ignoring what he had
told them about the situation.  James was a damned good technician, but
he couldn't work miracles.  No parts, no manuals, no in-country tech
support it was nearly a miracle in itself that he had been able to
carefully tweak and bend some flat cams on the take-up clutch and
linkage to make the deck work at all.

But people were like that sometimes.  Once you got a reputation for
doing "the impossible," some folks expected you to do it all the
time.

Never mind that most "impossible" things were only "impossible" to
those who worked By The Book with bags and boxes of original parts;
with a little thought and savvy, James had found it possible to modify,
mix, and interconnect different parts, assemblies, and whole units in
configurations the manufacturers had never thought about until James
did it the first time.  You just have to understand how things work,
look at them from a fresh viewpoint That ability stood James in good
stead.  If only people were as easy to understand ... and manipulate?

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's music pounded out of the speakers behind the
truck seat, making James's head bob in time with the throbbing rhythm,
when his eye was caught by a group of horses grazing beside a riding
school about halfway to his destination.

A sharp intake of breath.  Oh-h-h ...

With a will of its own his foot came off the gas pedal, letting the
truck slow as James turned his head to stare at the animals.  He
concentrated on the ones turned away from him.  Come on, come on.  Are
you?  One flicked a tail to show her marehood, the badge of her
femininity dimly revealed in the shadow.  Yes!

Nice ass.  A small groan escaped his lips at the sight; he wrenched his
eyes away, back to the road.

Why?  he wondered.  After all these years, why do horses still turn me
on?  I haven't touched an animal since I met Sheila.  All the books
I've read say bestiality is mostly something that young boys do, like
homosexual experimentation.  That stopped, why not this?  I've had good
sex with a woman!  Why do I have to be a pervert?

James became painfully aware of a throbbing erection cramping up in his
jeans.  There was no help for it; experience proved that it would not
just go away.

Where's the turnoff, someplace I can park for a few minutes without
being disturbed?  There!  The old cemetery by that abandoned church!

It has plenty of trees surrounding it After a quick scan for possible
observers, James pulled into the weed-choked driveway and drove behind
the sagging building.

He opened the door and put his feet on the ground, leaned back against
the end of the seat and quickly loosened his pants, fantasizing about
women, naked women, any women, as he frantically pulled and rubbed his
stiff penis.  When it started to soften he redoubled his efforts,
unwilling to forgo the pleasure of orgasm now that he had taken the
trouble of pulling off the road, but it refused to cooperate.

In desperation, his subconscious took over, replacing the images of
flesh-tones, pubic hair, and bouncing, gigantic breasts with the memory
of musky earthen scents, flowing tails, firm equine buttocks, and the
feel of horsehair against his naked thighs.  His erection returned.

Oh, God, not again!

Why not at least a normal jerk-off fantasy?  Oh, damn, oh, it feels too
good it feels too-Aaaahh!

-James stiffened as his seed spewed forth upon once-hallowed ground.

He chuckled to himself, a taste of manic hysteria in his voice.

Just like Onan.  Sorta.  His sin was refusing to impregnate his
brother's widow by pulling out and "spilling his seed upon the
ground."

I wonder if God is mad at me because I'm not shooting my semen in a
mare, cumming in cayuse cunt?

Since he was already stopped in a place of concealment, James took
advantage of the opportunity to shoot up again.

James took a different route coming home from the service call although
it meant an extra fifteen miles.  He kept his attention turned toward
the road ahead, unwilling to risk the sight of any more horses.

Dammit!  All the books said animal sex was just something that some
teenagers experimented with, and was fairly normal in a rural context
Why am I different?  Why didn't sex with women change me, replace this
bestial lust?  What in the name of all the Gods and Goddesses puts me
in that tiny minority of weirdos that continue to crave this ...

this ... perversion?

Society said it was something terrible.  Most states classified it as a
"crime against nature," something to be put in prison for.  True,
Missouri was no longer one of those states, but Kansas, where he grew
up and had done it and done it, again and again, still was.  So James
was a criminal even though he had never been arrested for it.  He was
just uncaught by the long arm of the law.  If someone told the
authorities over there, would they issue a warrant for my arrest?

Would it be safe to ever cross the state line again?  Is there a
statute of limitations on sodomy?

Sweet jumpin' Jesus, what's so terrible about this?  I never hurt
anybody or anything!  The horses didn't seem to mind-shit Mind?  They
enjoyed it as much as I did.  It wasn't like it was rape or anything!

The last thought cooled the defensive outrage that had started to build
in James, inspiring a humorous mental image.  The idea of raping a
horse .  . . standing naked behind an animal with powerful legs and
hard, sharp hooves, genitals swinging free and vulnerable, trying to do
something the animal didn't like.  WHACK!  Unconsciously he grasped
himself as if for reassurance, then laughed when he realized what he
was doing.

The humor was a relief.  One of the few things that saved James through
the years of growing up as a fat boy, then a fat man, always on the
outside of society looking in, was an ability to laugh at himself.

Even that hurt a little, but it hurt a lot less to tell the fat jokes
first, to disarm the situation, than to overhear others tell them and
snicker behind his back.

Fat Just another cosmic joke God played on me.  Born almost twice as
heavy as most babies, hit a hundred pounds by age nine, big bones,
strong but how can anyone tell that under all the lard?  "jimmy, don't
eat so much."  "jimmy, you need to go out and play hard."  "Jimmy, quit
sneaking food up to your room-I can still hear my mother.  Didn't she
realize that Food Was Love?  She taught me.  She-and Dad.  A scraped
knee, a pinched finger the prescription for life's little disasters was
a cookie, or a piece of candy, or an apple, whatever.  Dad would give
me little treats when I was a little boy, and I knew that he did it
because he loved me.  It was simple.  Whenever I was him, or other kids
teased me, or I felt bad about being fat all I had to do was eat
something and I'd feel better.  At least for a while ...

James felt hungry.  He shifted his 350-plus pounds on the truck seat,
trying to find a position where the steering wheel wouldn't rub his
belly.  He wouldn't stop for food, he wouldn t!  His thoughts
drifted.

Divorce.  No!  He had been through that so many times, and it never
made a damned bit of difference.

Think logically about this.  What are your troubles?  Drugs?  Lots of
people have drug problems whether they know it or not-your wife is
addicted to caffeine-laced soda pop and potato chips.  Divorce?  Hell,
lots of people go through that too.  It hurts, but everyone says the
pain lessens with time.  What makes you so special, fat boy?  What's
your unique trouble?  Huh?

The answer was obvious.  "Shit!  You know!"

"Okay, self, let's do an inventory!

"First off, now we're talking aloud to ourselves, to myself!

Crazy.?

Of course we are, of course I am!  doesn't talking to yourself with the
Death of a Million Needle Punctures, and driving away your family
because you don't want to see or talk to them, and wanting to eat
because you feel awful and ugly and fat,'and getting a hard-on every
time you see a horse pussy make you crazy?.  Damn right it does, you
stupid, genius, insane, crazy, perverted son of a bitch!"

With a scream of anguish James slammed on the brakes and whipped the
wheel to the right, bouncing his truck through the broad, shallow ditch
to come to rest at the edge of an open field, oblivious to the horns
and curses of the drivers behind him.

Sobs wracked his body as tears flowed behind the hands pressed to his
face.

CHAPTER FOUR Same day

'Are you okay."

With a start, Jim snapped awake.  It took a moment to shake off the
disorientation, then he saw the state trooper's face peering in at him
through the window.

"Uh, yeah, I guess so.  Sorry officer, I mean-I'm kind of embarrassed
.

. ."

"What's the trouble?  Have you been drinking?  Your eyes are all red.

Step out and let me see your driver's license."

James opened the door, climbed out, and produced license, registration,
and insurance card.

"I was just driving along, and kept thinking about my divorce.

I had to get off the road, I mean-" "Okay," the trooper interrupted.

"I don't smell anything on your breath, but you look like you're in a
hell of a shape.  Listen, Mr. Falabella, maybe you'd better stay here
for a little longer until you're sure you'll be safe out there on the
road."

"Thanks, I think I win.  I mean, normally I don't do anything like this
but it's been months and it just doesn't seem to get better .  .

."

The patrolman nodded sympathetically.  "Look, I went through the same
thing, and I know what you mean.  Just hang tough, hang in there.

Don't let it kill you or somebody else on the road.

"Go on home if you think you can.  Better yet, there's a motel about a
mile ahead.  Get some coffee, relax a while.  You'll feel better.

There's a single waitress who should be on her shift about now.

She's kind of chubby but really nice, with a good sense of humor and a
great personality."  He gave James a friendly pat on the back then
squeezed his shoulder.

"Thanks.  I really mean it."  James climbed back in and watched the
trooper return to his unit and drive away.  A few minutes later he did
the same.

Boy, even the cops figure I can't get a nice-looking woman and would be
willing to "settle for" whatever I can getting He resumed his
conversation, somehow unable, unwilling to avoid it.  He had avoided it
too long as it was.

"Okay, let's be calm and rational about this.  No more crying jags.

Overall, you're a reasonably nice guy, right?"

"Well, yeah, I suppose so .  . ."

"Shit-can the modesty crap!  Be assertive!  Be honest with yourself for
a change!  Hey, this is me talking, right?"

James grinned at himself.  'Right!  Okay, I'm a reasonably nice guy."

'So.  You're smart, you're talented, you can fix things, make things,
design things, understand how things work, right?"

"Right!"

"Now, those are things.  Maybe the trouble is that you're trying to
treat people as things, and that doesn't work.  Maybe you're trying to
treat yourself as a thing, and that doesn't work, either."

"Huh?"

"I'll chew on it a bit.  I'm not too sure about this, but I think we
may be onto something here .  . ."

As the self-conversation paused, James saw the motel and turned in.

He started toward the coffee shop but an impulse made him go to the
office instead.

"Got a single with some privacy.?"

The clerk looked up from the television behind the desk.  'We don't
allow no wild parties here."

'No problem.  I just want one where there won't be a lot of noise to
distract me.  I have some work to do."

"Okay, fill out this card, buddy.  That'll be twenty-two fifty, and I
need some I.D."

James counted out the cash and handed his driver's license to the
clerk.

When the clerk saw the address of a nearby city, he looked surprised at
first, then knowing.  "Oh, a broad!  That'll cost ya an extra five
bucks for double occupancy!"

James started to protest, then shrugged.  He paid the money and left
the office.

At a phone on a pedestal outside, he called home.  "Mom?  Look, I met
an old friend, and we're going to have something to eat then go to his
place for a while.  I may stay there tonight.  What?  No, he doesn't
have a phone.  Call the neighbors if you have any problems.

No, not those neighbors-the Thorndykes.  Huh?  Yeah, I suppose it's
okay if you go ahead and wash my dirty dishes.  Enjoy yourself.

Hey, look, this is expensive on a pay phone.  I'll see you tomorrow if
not tonight.  Bye."

It was scary.  Back there on the highway it hadn't mattered a bit to
,James what might have been on the side of the road.  If there had been
a concrete overpass, a gorge, a river, James knew he would have pulled
off anyway.  Something Had To Be Done.

James didn't know if the motel room was any solution, but there were
things he had to resolve, answers he had to have if he was going to go
on living.  He couldn't continue hating what he was and survive, but
his self-honesty, sadly abused as it had been over the years, still
wouldn't let him accept himself without some good reasons.

It was now of overriding importance to find those reasons.

Fairing that, he needed to end it before he hurt someone else in his
despair.

James opened the toolbox behind the cab of his pickup and took out a
yellow legal pad.  From the front he took his shaving kit.  After a
moment of eyes-closed contemplation, he reached under the seat and
withdrew a .45 automatic pistol.

With these three items in hand he unlocked the door and went inside to
find a reason to live ... or face his destiny.

It was the usual cheap, non-chain motel room.

A small bathroom with shower in the rear, a double bed, a nightstand,
two rugged 'easy" chairs and a "writing desk" built into the wall with
a telephone and a bad, ink-blotting, ballpoint pen chained to it.

James double-locked the door, put the pad, kit, and gun on the desk,
stripped off his clothes and took a slow shower.  The warm water
pounding on his overstuffed hide calmed his mind for a little while.

At least the motel is generous with towels, he thought as he emerged
wrapped in one.  Most towels weren't big enough to go around his
waist.

Seating himself at the desk, James reached for the shaving kit, then
stopped.  No, not yet Not until I get something down on paper.

Otherwise I might well spend the night shooting up and do nothing
else.

I can't go on like this much longer!

He took his own pen and, in large block letters, began to write: "The
only way I leave this room alive is if I find a reason, a cause for
being what I am."

He stared at the print for a moment, mind blank except for the growing
pain.  So, is that really the key question?  Maybe.

More: 'There must be a reason for what I am.  There must be.

Either something caused this, or I am just A sick pervert.  If it's the
first, maybe I can change.  If I can't change, maybe I can learn to
live with myself without so much guilt.  If there's no reason, if I'm
merely a piece of twisted subhuman scum, then the world, my parents,
and my children win be better off without me cluttering up their lives;
I might just as well finish it off here as drag out my miserable
existence."

Yeah.  Why should I hang around if all I will ever do is fuck up
someone else?  Sheila was right to leave.  I can barely stand to look
at myself.  What must it have been like to live with someone so full of
self-hatred?  GOD, what have I already done to my children?

James's eyes fell on the gun.  So easy.  It's plenty powerful; all I
have to do is make sure it takes out the brain stem at the back of my
neck to make- it quick and clean.  A little messy, but that's what they
pay maids for, right?

James started to reach for the gun.

No, not yet Suicide is serious business.

Yeah, so I'll reincarnate anyway, but the Gods get pretty pissed off at
you for trying to play hooky from the School of Life.  Then you'll just
have to come back and do it all over again.  And in the meantime it
won't be pleasant.  I'd better be damn sure before I pull that
trigger.

Don't be in a hurry ...

With deliberate calm, James again applied pen to paper: "MY TROUBLES: I
thought my attraction for horses had finally been resolved when I met
Sheila.  Great sex, at least at first, and someone intelligent enough
to understand what I was talking about.  Not quite as high an I.Q. as
me, but she's no slouch.  When we met, I was negotiating to rent a
small farmhouse and buy a pony.  I was resigned to a lonely life.

'Then I saw Sheila.  I could talk to her, tell her about my religious
odyssey.  One night in bed, just a few days after we started sleeping
together, I even told her about horses; she cried a bit, but explained
that she was crying for the pain I must have felt.  I loved her so much
at that moment.  For four years I never had a sexual thought about an
animal.  Then she stopped loving me."

I guess that's what happened.  She quit telling me about her problems
at work started withdrawing into herself Our sex life suffered.  We
started out with three, four, sometimes six times a day before we were
married.

We kept up at least twice a day until our son was born, right up to a
few hours before.  Then we averaged once a day for a year and a half
until our daughter was born.  Then twice a week Once a week Once a
month.  it got so I kept a secret calendar.  The last three years we
made love twice!  And one of those was just me going down on her She
laid there and got her gonads off, but I was on my own.

Sure, I saw a couple of hookers, but they cost too much and who knew
what you might catch from them?  I didn't want a lover, still don't an
affair gets too complicated too quickly.  Masturbation is a relief, but
by SHIT!  it's lonely.

"She resented my narcolepsy, the fact that I didn't have to or
couldn't-get up on a regular schedule and go to a job.  No matter that
she only worked six hours a day, nine months a year, and I still
brought in almost as much money as she did, plus big tax breaks for a
home-based business, plus being a ready-made babysitter; her background
seems to demand some kind of Puritan work-ethic crap!"

Hmmm, maybe it isn't all my fault nor hers.  Aw, hell, I've known that
for years.  Get back to what's really bothering you and quit
sidetracking!

"I first fucked a horse when I was seventeen.  My first woman was four
years later.  And the horse was a better piece of pussy."

Wow, I remember that ...

CHAPTER FIVE August 1967

The two teenaged boys enjoyed the breeze as the little motorcycle sang
its bumblebee song, zipping down the country blacktop at its top
cruising speed of thirty-five miles per hour.

David Hand, Jim's best friend, sat on the back of the seat, reclining a
bit to let more air blow between them, relieving the high-nineties
heat.

A little earlier Jim had ridden the half block to Dave's house,
swimming trunks and towel stuffed under the seat as usual eager and
ready to go to the old coal mine strip pit where two generations of
local boys had rigged a raft and a fifteen-foot diving board from the
high bank.  It had been the summer routine since Jim got the Honda on
his fifteenth birthday, except when they had odd jobs such as hauling
hay; afterwards, 'the pits" were a welcome place to wash off the itchy
dust and cool down.

Today, David had a different idea.  "Let's go west, instead.  I haven't
seen my grandparents for a while, and we can fool around on the
farm."

'Aw, it's hot.  I was looking forward to a swim."

"Well, shit, Jim!  My mother said I had to go see them today.  If we
don't take your Honda, I'll have to ride my bicycle, and it's five
miles!  Besides, they live near the river, and it's cooler there than
at the pits."

Jim finally agreed, stopped at home to leave his swimming gear on the
porch and inform his father of the change of plans, and they were
off.

Dave was right I liked his grandparents' farm.  There were lots of tall
oak trees, and even some elms that hadn't yet died from Dutch elm
disease.  And the old folks were pretty nice.  His grandfather had once
been superintendent of schools, and he told us some stories about the
teachers we had.  it was fun.  And it was the first time I met "her."

David suggested we go for a ride beside the river, but when I started
to walk toward the motorbike, he stopped me.

"That's not what I meant.  Look."

What he pointed at was a two-wheeled pony cart, and a little pinto
Shetland pony standing nearby.

That was okay with me.  It'd save on gas, and I'd sort of wanted a
horse of my own to play cowboy with when I was younger, but could never
have one.  We hitched up the old mare; David drove, and we found a nice
place on the riverbank to sit and talk while the pony grazed.

As usual, the talk turned to sex.  Jim and Dave were both still
virgins, and both quite unhappy about it.

"Ever see a naked woman?"  David stroked the crotch of his jeans.

"Yeah.  At the Columbus county fair last year, they had this tent.

It cost a dollar to go in, and there was a woman laying in there, you
had to put your head through a hole in a canvas wall, but she was right
there just a couple of feet away on a blanket on the ground."

David rubbed harder.  "Could you see everything?"  James felt his own
penis stiffening at the memory.  "She had a towel between her legs.

But if you gave her another dollar, she'd take the towel away."

"Didja?"

"Yeah.  It was okay, I guess, but she kept her legs together so you
couldn't see nothin'.  I shoulda said, 'Hey, lady, if I wanted to look
at hair, I can use a mirror."That's what I shoulda said."

'I saw Debbie Belwin naked."

"No shit?  When?"

By -unspoken agreement, the boys unzipped their jeans and began to jack
off.

"Last spring.  I was going to see Randy one night, but when I got near
the house I could see the blinds were up in one of the bedrooms, and
someone was moving around.  It was his sister, Debbie, and she was
getting' ready for a date or something."

James jerked faster.  "Tell me more!"

David's voice began to jump in time with his hand.  "She was standing
naked in front of her dresser mirror.  I could see her ass, and in the
mirror I could see her tits.  They were nice, not big, but she had
hard, pink nipples.  And she was playing with herself, you know?  She
kept running her finger up and down her snatch, and I could see it
going inside a little.  It made her pussy lips stand right out, I could
see it, I could see them, uh, all, unh, all clear!"

The description was all it took to finish both boys.  They rolled
sideways away from each other so the semen wouldn't stain their
clothing, then they rinsed off with river water.

'Damn, I wish I could see a pussy."

"See one, hell!  I wanna get laid!  I'll be a senior this year, an' I
gotta get some!"

James agreed with David, but he really didn't want to wait until his
senior year.  The upcoming junior term would be fine with him.

In fact, anytime starting in about ten minutes would be all right!

We drove back to the barn and unhitched the little pony.  Dave gave me
a brush and said I should wipe the horse down, then he took the harness
into the tack room to clean and oil it I don't remember her name or if
she even had one.  What I do remember is brushing the sweat out of her
coat working my way back from the head to the tail And I remember she
lifted her tail up for some reason.  There, staring right up at me, was
a pussy.  A horse pussy, to be sure, but it looked a lot like the human
ones I had seen in my father's medical books.  The hot day, the
masturbation and sex talk by the river, being with David, the only boy
I knew hornier than I was-it all came together in an irresistible
impulse.  I touched it It felt smooth and velvety, soft and warm on the
outside, with just a little short downy hair on the lips.  My heart was
pounding in my chest I slipped my middle finger inside the tight slit
the way I had imagined countless times doing to a girl.  Oh, lordy, it
felt hot and moist and slick and soft and I could just imagine it
around my dick and I was getting another hard-on, and then-THEN she
twitched.  Her pussy puckered up and tightened around my finger,
milking at it clenching as though she didn't want to let go!

I almost came in my pants thinking of a pussy doing that to my dick!

Then I heard David returning.

James jerked his finger free and pushed the mare's tail down with his
hand.  He quickly resumed brushing, standing close to the pony's side
to hide his erection.

I said nothing to David about the pony, but on the ride back to town I
surreptitiously brought the finger to my nose and sniffed.  An earthy,
rich, musky aroma filled my nostrils, not at all like I expected.  The
memory of the smell, the touch, the clenching stayed with me, enriching
my masturbatory fantasies for months to come.  I figured if horse cunt
was that nice on my finger, a real girl on my male member would be more
wonderful than I could possibly imagine.  it would probably kill me.

 CHAPTER SIX April 1968 Jim was proud of himself.  Due to an
unexpected allergic reaction to penicillin two months before, he had
lost forty pounds.  He felt good, and in celebration his mother allowed
him to select a pair of fashionable hip-huggers.  They were light blue,
of a broad corduroy nap, and he bought a wide belt to go with them.

Coupled with a blue-gray velour long-sleeved pullover shirt and a
careful spit-shine on his cordovan penny loafers, James was mod!

I looked good, felt good, and was ready to take on the world.

More to the point I was ready to ask Wendy Grover to the Junior-Senior
Prom.

Several times that spring I asked her out for a movie or dragging Main
Street in Parsons, and though she never actually went with me for one
reason or another, she said to try again later every time she
refused.

I had a serious crush on her, I believed she felt the same way and was
as frustrated as I by the circumstances that kept her from accepting.

After all, I helped her with her schoolwork in study hall several times
a week,- she would sit close as I worked her General Math problems and
explained them to her or filled out her biology workbook When I pointed
out parts of the drawings she didn't have quite right sometimes she
would rub her firm, pointy tits on my arm as she reached for the
paper.

Then she would look at my lap and smile at the erection that was almost
always there; it made it even harder and more painful when she did that
but I loved her for it through the ache.

Jim thought Wendy was the cutest girl in the junior class.

Small, dark-haired, with a perpetual squint from her contact lenses,
she lacked the statuesque beauty of blonde Wanda Pohl, or the massively
jutting breasts of Nikki Doolan, but the combination of pixieish face,
full lips, nicely shaped body, and short stature, made her quite
attractive.

Out of the ten female juniors, she was the obvious top choice as far as
Jim was concerned.

He caught up with her at her locker a few minutes before the
end-of-lunch bell.

'Well, Wendy, the prom's in a couple of weeks, yknow .  .

'Yeah,so?"

"Well, I was wondering, you know, I've asked you out other times and
you couldn't make it, but you said to try again, and-" "Are you asking
me to the prom?"  Her voice carried and other students stopped to
listen, grinning.

Jim blushed.  'Weller, uh, kind of, I guess-I mean, well, yeah .

.

He reddened further as she laughed, joined by the bystanders.

I wanted to drop dead, or have the old building collapse, or go back
five minutes.  As Wendy regained her control and started to speak I
wished the sun would go supernova and destroy us all!

"You?  You think I'd go to the prom with you?  Why?.  Ha-ha-ha!

Why?"

Jim was shattered, confused.  He stammered, "B-b-but, but, all those
hours in study hall, a-and the way you sat close, and you s-said to, to
ask again, and-" 'You fat slob!  You idiot!"  Contemptuously, "I needed
the grades so I wouldn't get grounded at home!  So I could go out on
dates, but not with you!  I like to date guys who'll talk about
records, or movies, or sports; you'd just bore me with all that stupid
talk about science, or books, or politics or something!"

By this time it seemed as if half the eighty members of the highschool
student body were standing in the hallway with them.  Some of the
faculty were there also, including Calvin Schwartz, crew-cut, flapeared
assistant coach, math teacher, and part-time pig farmer.  Jim was in a
panic, his whole life flashing before his eyes as he drowned in a sea
of shame.

 65 "Please, not so loud!  D-do you, how do you expect me to help you
after this?"

"I don't care!  I'll get Cs for the semester, and that's good enough
for my parents.  I don't need you any more, besides I'm tired of you
staring down my blouse or up my skirt, and the way you get hardons
around me!  You're just a sick, grief brainhead, a nobody!

You don't even go out for sports!"

Stricken, James felt himself weaken almost to the point of collapse.

I didn't know at the time that I had the early stages of narcolepsy,
that strong emotions induced cataplexy, which paralyzes the voluntary
muscles to varying degrees.  I just attributed the weakness to the
humiliation I felt then.  But she wasn't done.

Wendy looked around at the crowd, basking in her perception of
approval, a perception that wasn't far wrong given the innate cruelty
of adolescents.  She delivered her final blow.

"If you need a date for the prom, why don't you ask Mr. Schwartz to
loan you one of his pigs'.7 That'd be about right for you!"

The laughter of the crowd rang in my ears as she slammed her locker
door closed and flounced off down the hall.  Thinking back, I'm sure
there must have been some who didn't laugh, who maybe even felt some
sympathy for me, but at the time it seemed the whole world was laughing
at my downfall.  And I wasn't popular with the whole student body, not
by any means.  Many resented the ease with which I did the schoolwork
that they struggled with; they hated the freedom of the halls I had as
the yearbook photographer, some just hated me for being a preacher's
kid, afraid I would spill the beans about their little beer parties or
the Playboy magazines hidden in their lockers, little realizing that I
was as dirty-minded as any of them.  All these reveled in my shame.

I stumbled to chemistry class where I sat in a daze, mercifully
surrounded by the three other "nerds" in the school We made a real
set-a tall, gangling guy who everyone called "Joe Queer" even though
there was no evidence he was a homosexual, and two kids, one a tall,
blonde valkyrie, the other short skinny, and hairy-armed.  None of them
made any comment about the scene although I knew they'd seen it they
just looked at me with understanding and sympathy.  I hated them, too,
hated them for knowing the depths of my hurt I stumbled to American
history, where I had to sit in the same room with her, enduring the
stares, grins, and snickers as the others whispered amongst
themselves.

I left school a few minutes early with the principal's permission, rode
my little motorcycle home, and went to my room, where I lay face-down
for hours, sobbing into my pillow.

I didn't want to go back to school, didn't want to face my peers again,
didn't want to spend another day in the little town where my spirit
died.  But I had no choice in the matter.

"Hey, Fat-boy!  The vo-ag teacher wants you in the barn!  He says
there's a cow about to flunk out, and if you'll help with her homework,
maybe she'll go to the dance with you!"

"Watch out, Shirley, don't let Smart-Ass get too close to you.

He'll get a hard-on!"

"Gotcher date lined up yet, Jim?  Oink-oink!"

Stiff with sullen anger, James endured.  He still had some friends,
although even they grinned a bit in spite of themselves.

Though it seemed forever, the wisecracks, the snide looks, all
gradually faded.

"Look, Jim," said David one afternoon, "I've got this cousin who lives
in Chanute, she's not real pretty, but not bad, either, and I think
she'd love to be your date at the prom."

-"No!  I'll take care of this myself."

Dave looked hurt.  'Hey, I'm just trying to help!"

"Never mind!  aw, shit, What'm I gripin' at you for?  I just get so
goddamn mad when I think of how Wendy played me for a sucker.

Then she had to tell the whole damned school!  Bitch!  Little goddamn
bitch-and the rest of 'em, they're bitches, too!"

James rolled over on his bed to look at David, sitting at the desk.

"So, whattaya gonna do?"

"I dunno."

'Y'know what'd be great?  Walk into the gym on prom night with a
knockout chick on your arm!  That'd show 'em'" "Ye-eah-h-h!  That'd do
it all right!"

I could see it all I'd skip the formal dinner, then wait until the
first dance-no, the second one-had started, then, with a dramatic
flair, throw the double doors open wide.  We'd walk in with dignity,
heads held high, then pause right at the edge of the dance floor,
standing in the arched trellis with all the roses tied to it The
crepe-paper streamers draping down from the ceiling would form a focal
point to lead all eyes to us.  The scoffing boys would be stunned, jaws
agape as they stared at us; Wendy would be green with envy, maybe even
faint or get sick and have to leave early.  My date would dance every
dance with me and we'd be like Rogers and Astaire-the floor would
magically clear around us, the others ashamed to make their clumsy
movements anywhere near such obvious grace, beauty, and poise.

'Oh, fuck, where the hell would I find a date like that in my whole
life, much less in four days?"

"Yeah.  But it would be fun, wouldn't it?"

"Who are you taking, Dave?"

"Nobody.  I'm going stag, just like half the guys who'll be there, and
half the girls, too.  I couldn't find a date, either."

The teenagers shared a mutually sympathetic silence.

"Yknow what my problem is, Dave?  I can't talk to girls.  I mean, I
never know what to say, what they like to talk about.  All my sisters
ever talked about was boys, or clothes, or makeup, or movie stars, or
shit like that."

"Yeah, mine too."

"Even if I knew what to say, I dunno if I could say it.  When I see a
girl, all I can think about is how she would look naked, how her tits
would hang, what her pussy would look like, how much I'd like to fuck
her .  . ."

"Yeah, really.  It seems like I have a hard-on all the time!  Hey, you
know Ellie May, the fat girl in your chemistry class?  In eighth grade,
before you moved here, me and Wayne took her out back of the school one
day and we gave her a candy bar and she let us feel her up."

'Really?  What was it like?"

"I dunno.  It was kind of hard to tell with all the fat and stuff.

She was only starting to get tits and pubic hair, and her pussy still
felt like a smooth groove.  Wayne tried to talk her into letting him
stick it in, but she said her older brother Tommy once tried to do that
and it hurt, so she wouldn't let him.  We only had a few minutes,
anyway."

"Huh!  I miss all the fun.  I'll tell you a secret ... she sits in
front of me in American history, and lots of times I rub my knee on her
butt and even my hand sometimes."

"What's she do?"

"Usually not much.  Sometimes she turns her head and gives me a funny
look, like she kinda likes it but kinda don't.  I had to stop it after
ol' Drew-Fart, the teacher, saw me one day."

"Maybe you should ask her.  At least she's a lot smarter than Wendy,
and I think she likes you."

"Aw, shit!  wouldn't we make a couple?  I can just hear the assholes'
wisecracks about 'cows and pigs' starting up again, and it'd hurt her
feelings something awful, and I'd feel honor-bound to defend her, and
I'd wind up in a big fight, and get the crap beaten out of me by some
jock-strap-brained idiot, and probably get thrown out of school to
boot!"

"Yeah, you're right.  So, what're you gonna do?"

"Stay home, I guess.  Look, don't tell anybody yet, but my dad thinks
the church is gonna move us to another town just after school's out.

If I can tough it out a few more weeks, it'l be over."

"Well, damn!  I'll miss you."

The, too.  You, I mean; I hope I can find another dirty-minded friend
wherever I wind up.  Speaking of which, I found some old nudist
magazines in the back of my dad's desk.  Wanna see 'em?"

"Do they show everything.  Pubes and all?"

"Yeah!  Young girls, women, old ladies-everything!"

The boys got a laugh out of some pot-bellied old man playing volleyball
in cowboy hat and boots, his little dick flopping in the air, but they
also managed to use up some facial tissues that afternoon.

In the end, I couldn't face the music, so I didn't go to the prom.

I was so bitter about girls and myself at the time it probably would
have been awful even with a date.  I decided that if I couldn't join
'em, I'd lick 'em!

For most of a year when I masturbated to hidden pictures of nude women,
I remembered the feel, the smell, of that pony pussy.  it made
my'fantasies more real, my orgasms more intense.  Gradually at firs but
with greater and greater strength after my fumbled attempts to get a
date, I became aware of the fact that David's pony had a pussy at about
the right height one that felt very good to my fingers, and she
couldn't laugh at me!

Prior to that afternoon in the barn, the thought that humans might have
sex with animals hadn't seriously occurred to me, certainly not in a
personal context Sure, I'd heard the jokes a few times, and there was
Jackie, a boy a year older than me, and the stories that were whispered
about him.  Jackie's sister, Sharon, was two years younger than me, but
she had an incredible body!  Sometimes during the summer, boys would
drive by their farm in hopes of seeing Sharon out on a tractor doing
field work-she always wore a skimpy bikini when she did.

Jackie was a short stocky bully.  Not too bright he was just another
jock who took delight in pushing others around, especially me-or so it
seemed.  Now and then you'd hear a story about him, though.

Rumor had it that he tried to rape his sister, once, but she beat the
shit out of him.  I could believe that Sharon was pretty tough and
mean, too.

But the best stories, never repeated in Jackie's presence, were the
ones where Sharon caught him in the barn fucking a cow or a horse.

Some went so far as to claim that she held the animals still for him so
he could get his nuts off and would quit bothering her.

I shared the snickers of my peers, taking vicarious revenge on a boy we
feared and hated.  butt I didn't really believe it nor do I think my
friends did, either.  it was in the same class as the ribbing we gave a
classmate who had made enough money raising his own pigs on his
father's farm to buy a new Mustang.  the first in our little town.

We teased nearsighted Darrell about having litters of piglets born
wearing glasses, and laughed at the way he'd blush.

To us, the idea was so ludicrous that nobody took it seriously, either
about Jackie or Darrell Nor did we believe it really happened with
anyone else, unless it might be some crazed, retarded subhuman who
drooled and could barely speak But I was beginning to take a second,
much longer look at it Humanity seemed to want nothing to do with me;
sometimes I wondered.  Was I really a part of this strange race of
near-hairless apes?  They didn't seem to want me.  Very welt I'd take
care of that!  I decided that while my schoolmates were fumbling and
stumbling at their juvenile frolic, I was going to get fucked!  I
didn't care if it was an animal, I just wanted to find out what it felt
like to stick my dick in something warm, wet and alive, something
designed for a penis, made to accept hot spurting semen.

The Friday afternoon of the prom, the school let the juniors and
seniors out early so they could go to the neighboring bigger towns to
pick up their rented tuxes and collect the corsages held in
refrigerated reserve at florist shops.

While other high-school boys prepared to spend the money they'd
carefully saved from allowances and after-school farm work, I went
home, changed into cutoff jeans and a short-sleeved shirt packed a few
of the small cigars I'd recently started smoking in a pocket along with
a carrot and climbed onto my Honda.

At the farm I explained to David's grandparents that I wanted to work
on a wildlife project for scouts, and asked permission to ride around
their wooded pasture looking for animal tracks.  Being a retired
educator, Dave's grandpa agreed, even suggesting parts of the woods
where there were game trails.  All he asked was that I not frighten the
few cows and the pony that were out there.

I motored slowly, hoping the mare wasn't close by the house or barn.  I
was in luck spotting her near the back of the property, standing in the
shade of a small copse of trees, totally out of sight of likely
observers.

- I parked the cycle some distance away so as not to spook her.

I needn't have worried; the little mare was so old and foot-sore from
founder that I probably could have ridden over her without disturbing
her.  She turned her head to look at me as I nervously approached on
foot "Easy, girl.  Look a nice carrot" As she munched the treat I
stroked her neck and back I didn't know if she might kick or something;
I sincerely hoped not but I was willing to risk it anyway.

I ran a hand down her near-side hip, then up the back of her leg and
under her tail She lifted it a little bit further encouraging me.

I looked-yeah, she still had a pussy.  A cruel Universe hadn't made it
vanish into thin air to further frustrate me.  A pinto with a white but
her pussy was even pink like a girl's.  I slid my fingertip inside as
before, and it felt every bit as good as my memory of the previous
summer.  I poked in and out a few times, rewarded by the muscular
clasping.  Checking again to be sure I wouldn't be seen, I slipped my
shorts and underpants off over my sneakers and let my modest erection
wave in the open air.

There was yet another reason I hated team sports-the locker room.

I hated being teased about having a short penis.  How the hell was it
my fault that it only measured four inches long?  What would a girl
say?

Maybe I wasn't "hung like a horse," but at least the mare wouldn't
laugh ...

Breathing in ragged gasps, James stepped behind the pony and lifted her
tail high.  He poked, gently at first, then harder as he encountered
dry resistance at the closed lips of the equine vulva.  He summoned
what spit he could from his excitement-parched mouth and smeared it
over the head of his dick.

I finally had to spread her open with my thumbs and just stick the tip
inside.  With effon, I pushed deeper into her, then drew back a
little.

I was surprised at how tight it felt Push again, a bit further, back
out a little, push again.... Eventually her natural juices flowed and
spread out making for easy, lubricious movement God, it was heaven!  I
didn't manage to screw very long-how many boys do, their first
time?-but it was great while it lasted!  The velvet lining of her
vagina the strong lips clasped about my member, and the twitching!  Oh,
Lordy, the twitching!  As I reversed direction to pull back her muscles
gripped my penis like a fist then as I pushed in, they relaxed again
until I hit the end of my stroke-then clasped tightly around the base
of my penis.  in-twitch!  Out-twitch!  Within a couple of minutes I was
pounding away for all I was worth, feeling my orgasm mount As I came, I
shoved as hard and deep into her box as I could; she seemed to know
what was happening pushing back so suddenly I almost fell.  We locked
together in that position as my semen spurted inside at the limit of my
reach; I could feel her pussy rapidly twitching around me, milking me
of my seed.  I moaned and she whinnied.  The poor old girl had probably
needed and wanted sex as much as I did!  I pulled out and sat down on
the ground behind her, gasping for breath.  Right in front of my face I
could see her pussy still puckering under her elevated tail as
translucent white fluid oozed out and dripped off.  If animal pussy was
so incredibly good, I wondered, what would a woman be like?

CHAPTER SEVEN April 1987, same nigh in the motel James became aware of
his surroundings as he roused from his reverie.

He had, again, an erection.  His left hand unconsciously rubbed it
through the towel as he contemplated that memory.

What's so significant about that?  I've relived that scene more often
than "M*A*S*H' has reruns.  Causes.  Causeskay, the reason I selected a
horse as a sex object was pretty much random chance from circumstance,
but I decided to fuck her to make up for my humiliation.

On another sheet of paper, James wrote, "REASONS WHY:" at the top, then
entered below that, "Circumstances, opportunity-humiliated by
girl-humiliated by most students."- A pause, then, "Horny as a
three-balled tomcat."

He drew a line down the middle of the page, making two columns.

At the top of the second one, he wrote: 'HOW I FEEL ABOUT THESE."

After "Circumstance, opportunity," he wrote, "Okay.  It was
happenstance and curiosity."

He skipped to the bottom of the first column and drew a line up to his
last comment.  "What teenage boy isn't?"

Then he stared at the middle entries, the most significant.

How do I feel?  I still feel angry, betrayed, taken-advantage-of I feel
they resented my brains?  Because they didn't like me?  Maybe worse,
just because I was there, available?  Was I an available
target-of-chance for their cruel instincts?

James wrote these down.

Which is better, which am I more comfortable with?  Does it matter?

I don't know which one speaks worse for the condition of Man....

The distraction had caused James to lose his erection, much to his
immediate relief.

I'll never get done if I keep getting horny.  Was high school all
bad?

Didn't I have any fun?  Of course.  There was that time in my sophomore
year ...

James, David, and a boy named Lenny from the nearby county seat were
committing a crime; criminal trespass, to be exact.  They were inside
the school building on a Sunday afternoon without permission of the
school authorities.

They weren't too worried, because they hadn't come to do harm, and
everyone did it now and then.  The old combined grade- and highschool
buildings had so many windows and doors that the custodians never got
them all locked; every kid in town knew this, and took advantage of it
to sneak into the gym and play a little scratch basketball when things
got too boring.  Almost every Sunday, in other words.  The school
officials weren't too worried since the kids didn't tear anything up,
took off their shoes before going out on the gym floor, and were better
off there than dreaming up mischief; they always left a few old
basketballs out so nobody would be tempted to break into the locker
rooms to get one.

Since none of the three boys was athletically inclined, the thrill of
illegal entry was the prime appeal that day.  They tossed a ball around
for a bit, shot a few baskets, then wandered out into the lobby where
the pop cooler was.

it was one of those horizontal chest-style machines, where the pop
bottles were suspended by their necks on rails.  You put your dime in,
made your selection, then slid it over to a gate where you could pull
it out I chose my favorite, Strawberry Fanta.

They sat on the ticket counter while they sipped at their drinks
and swapped dirty jokes until Lenny asked, "What's down there?"

David looked at Lenny, a small-statured boy, who was staring at a
folding metal gate stretched across the hallway.

"Aw, that's the grade school part of the building."

"No, between the two gates.  What're those doors?"

"Grade-school bathrooms."

"Girls'too?"

" 'Course.  Why?"

"I've never been in one.  I just wanta know what's different."

Dave and Jim were curious, too.  Jim spoke, "How ya gonna do that?

The gate's locked."

Lenny grinned.  "That's the one good thing about being small.

I'll bet I can climb over."

They hopped off the counter and walked over to inspect the gate.

Lenny took off his red shirt, not wanting to snag and tear it on the
top of the gate.  His blue eyes sparkled as he said, "I can do it."

With that, he grasped the thin bars, stuck the toes of his sneakers
into the diamond-shaped gaps, and quickly shinnied up and over, then
headed immediately for the forbidden goal and disappeared inside.

In a moment he stuck his head out.

"What's it like?"  David asked.

"Mostly like a boy's room, but it's all pots, no pissers."

'That's to be expected," said James, "girls sit down for everything."

"Yeah, well, there's a vending machine in here, too, for combs or
hairpins or something.  What does 'Kotex' mean!"

Jim's eyes lit up.  "It means we can have some fun!"

"Huh?"

"How much are they.?"  Lenny vanished inside, then reappeared.

"Five cents."

James searched his pockets with no result.  "Dave, got a nickel?"

'Yeah!  Here, Lenny!"  David threw the coin through the gate.

"Get one."

When Lenny was back on the lobby side, he handed James the packet.

"What is that?"

James grinned.  "The ticket to panic.  Girls freak out about these."

"Oh, I forgot you don't have sisters.  These, Davy, are pussy pads,
manhole covers, the Red Flag of Womanhood!"

A blank look.

"C'mon, you've had hygiene class, haven't you?"

A nod.  'Well, when girls get old enough to be interesting, they bleed
once a month."

"From the pussy, right?"

"Yeah.  Serves 'em right for bein' girls.  Anyway, they wear these to
soak up the blood and keep it off their clothes.  But we can do
something better with this!  Here, I'll show you .  . ."

James opened the package, unfolded the napkin inside, then laid it out
on the ticket counter.  He then reached for his almost-empty bottle of
strawberry soda and carefully poured a short red line down the middle
of the pad.

"There.  Looks kinda like watery blood, right?"The other two nodded.

They watched as James went to the pop machine, opened the lid, then
gently laid the napkin right in the center, 'bloody" side up.  As the
light dawned, both boys began to giggle, then laugh.  James caught it,
too, dropped the lid closed, and choked out, "J-j-just th-think,
Dave!

When the third g-graders come up for th-their morning snack break
they-they'll see ... haw-haw-HAW!"

All three roared at the thought, hamming it up by rolling around on the
tile floor until David shushed them.  "Hey, cool it, guys!  I just saw
old man Simpson out front on the sidewalk looking this way!"

The other two stopped and quickly checked to make sure they were
visible through the windows.

"Wow, we'd better get out of here."

"Right, man!  If anyone sees us here, they'll know who pulled this
trick!"

The boys crept through the gym to the back door, then ran outside,
ducking from cover to cover, getting a kick out of the adventure of
playing "Commando-Spy-infiltrator."  On reaching the football field
unobserved, they split up, agreeing to rendezvous in front of Lee's
Service Station in ten minutes.

It had been a good afternoon.

That trick worked even better than we expected.  The third grade in
fact the whole elementary school-was gone on a field trip, so they
didn't open the machine first Instead, four varsity cheerleaders did
their usual routine of skipping lunch in the cafeteria and headed for
the gym lobby to munch chips, drink pop, and flirt with the football
jocks.

About ten minutes after the lunch bell rang there was an ear-piercing
scream that echoed through both buildings.

Miss Ligget the English teacher, was the first to run down the steps
and the halt A minute later, one of the cheerleaders ran back up, all
the way around the high school's first floor to the high-school
girls'room, then ran back out after a moment with a handful of paper
towels.

I looked down the hall Miss Ligget and the other three cheerleaders had
formed a cordon, blocking the pop machine from the profane gaze of
males.  When the fourth cheerleader returned with the towels, Miss
Ligget opened the pop-machine lid, reached in with the towels, and
reemerged with a wadded mass of paper which she immediately began
carrying in my direction, back to the high-school girls'room.  I was
sorely tempted to ask her what was up, but her eyes were flashing fire
toward any male in reach, and I didn't know if I could hold it together
well enough to fake her out so I ducked down the other stairs to the
cafeteria.

David and I savored that joke for weeks, and Lenny choked up, too, when
we told him about it The story eventually got around school, and most
of the kids thought it was great.  we never 'fessed-up to doing it and
the popular consensus blamed Shirley, a precocious eighth-grader.

We were content to leave the credit to others; we knew we had done A
Great Thing the stuff of legends.

'Good tricks and good humor made up for a lot.  A lot of pain, a lot of
hurt could be turned around with laughter," James wrote.  "I got pretty
good at it; I could smell a putdown coming and make a joke at myself
before anyone else had a chance to do it."  His pen paused.

'Watch it or I'll sit on you and you'll never be the same!"  I could
break up a roomful of kids by stuffing two donuts into my mouth at the
same time, then rolling my eyes, wiggling my ears, and doing a dramatic
ham-it-up swallow routine.  My reputation as a clown began on the third
day in that new school the math teacher-pig farmer had a heavy-duty,
extra-wide yardstick he showed every class.  He assured us he could and
would use it to keep order.  That third day I was whispering to another
freshman when Cal Schwartz caught me and decided I'd make a prime
example.  Besides, he didn't like the fact that I'd quit the football
team just before school started, after two weeks of practice.

If he'd been satisfied with a self-mobile roadblock I'd have been happy
to stay in the line, but he and the head coach thought all their
players should do wind sprints and jack around with all that
calisthenics crap.

I would have worked out with free weights, pounded the blocking sled,
whatever, if I just didn't have to run!

Bull no.  "Everybody works out Falabella!  You think you're too good
for that?"  No, I didn't I just didn't want to run, so I handed in my
gear and rode my bicycle home to spend the last weekend before classes
in relaxation.  Now, six days later, Schwartz saw his chance to teach
me a lesson.

"WHACK!  The yardstick made a nasty sound as it smacked flat against
the desk Mr Schwartz was the quintessential stereotypical pig farmer
and bully, beer gut lapping over his narrow belt stretching his
wrinkled white shirt into gaping ovoids between buttons, revealing the
grimy undershirt beneath.  His ears stood straight out from his
neckless head, set off by the habitual crew-cut and round face with
too-widely-spaced little black eyes flanking an upturned pug nose.  I
swear, he looked like a cross between Hermann Goering and one of his
pigs.

He focused those glittering piggy-eyes on me and gestured me forward
with a grin of anticipation.

"Bend over and grab your ankles," he said when I reached the front of
-the room.  No possibility for appeal was in that voice, nor would I
give him the satisfaction of asking.  I just set my jaw and did as
instructed, bracing myself for whatever blow might come.

"Crack!"  The sound was much worse than the impact As I relaxed a
little, I heard some un-teacher-like language from Mr. Schwartz, then
saw a bright varnished piece of wood bounce off the wall in front of
me.

Maybe it was the preparatory smack on the desk, maybe there was an
inherent flaw in the wood.  I don't think I had buttocks of steel, but
whatever the reason, the first stroke had broken his brand-new
yardstick/paddle.

He sent me back to my seat amidst grins of appreciation from the rest
of the class, gazing at the pieces of wood, an unfathomable expression
on his face.  That day I was a minor hero; the new kid who had slain
the ogre.

Actually, Mr. Schwartz and I got along pretty well the rest of the
years I was in that school-aside from being rude, crude, loud, and
sloppy, the man loved mathematics with a passion seldom seen, and he
found in me a student who could be led to see the beauty of numbers,
who attended class because I liked what he was teaching.  My status
changed; to him I became an eager pupil ready to accept the offerings
of the great thinkers of the past to the rest of the students I became
a teacher's pet a greasy grind, and a sometime object of ridicule.

Most couldn't understand the mixture, thus to them I was someone to be
avoided when possible.  They liked it when I rigged teachers'chairs
with thumbtacks and whoopee cushions, or gas out the library one day by
rigging a bypass in the chemistry lab's exhaust hood, or made minor
explosive booby traps and hid them in teachers' desks, but few of them
trusted me with the knowledge of their own pranks or minor truancies.

Teachers liked me and rarely suspected that I was the cause of so many
disruptions; I was a preacher's kid, I was too different from the rest
of them.  A few good friends formed the core of my life, perhaps
burning brighter for its compact size, its density.  But no girls ever
reached that center of action; rarely did they even penetrate the outer
fringes of the darkness.

James's head swam with memories as he stared at the few words actually
written on the paper, words that had triggered so many painful
recollections mixed with an odd nostalgia.

If I had known then what I know now, I could have done it
differently.

"No!"  Aloud.  "The past is over, you can't change it!  You've been
trying to do that, or forget it, for most of your life.  It's time to
learn from it and change what you can about the future!"

He stared at the page again and continued his self-conversation as he
let his body go through the familiar motions, preparing and injecting
another dose from his shaving kit.

"Okay, now, what have you learned from this?  You already knew you had
trouble relating to girls.  Maybe this means you already had the
problem when you went into high school."

"All right, so what?"

"So, dig back earlier, find those bad experiences you've buried before
they bury you.  You have to do it, or you win die by your own handgun
or needle, it makes no difference!"

80 "I'm scared .  . ."

"I know.  Me too.  Do it."

Another sheet of paper.  'I first remember getting interested in girls,
in maybe dating one, in the eighth grade.  Debbie was dark-haired,
slender, with budding breasts, soft, pouting lips, and brown eyes you
could fall into if you looked long enough.  And I had known her since
we started kindergarten together."

Eighth grade.  Now we lived right in the little Kansas town, the one I
rode the school bus to when we lived in the country, the bishop had
moved us in the summer before sixth grade.  Now I saw Johnny only
during school, or the rare times his family came to the small town
instead of going shopping in the county seat like most people in the
area.  Kelly, Mike, and Greg were my main pals now that we lived within
easy bicycle distance of each other.  Hen, the whole town was only
about ten blocks long and eight wide, less than a mile in any
dimension.

I would lie in bed at nigh fantasizing about Debbie or her best friend
Wilma, stroking my still-hairless-but-hard penis.  For some reason,
they would be in my bedroom talking to me as I lay naked under my
blankets.  Maybe I was sick on my deathbed, and whichever one was there
felt sorry for me.  it was cold in the room, and the girl would express
discomfort Gallantly, I would offer to let her get under the covers
with-me and warm up, which offer she would gratefully accept After a
few minutes, she would be too warm, and I would then point out that I
was naked (for some reason neither one noticed this salient fact until
I mentioned it) and that the covers were perfect if you were in that
condition.  Whichever one occupied my mind at that moment would proceed
to disrobe while still under the electric blanket with me and we would
... what?  I wasn't sure exactly what we would do, or how, but I knew I
wanted to do "it" whatever it was.

Funny how I can't even remember their last names.  I think I wanted
Wilma the most but she seemed totally unapproachable, a tall girl with
a dusky Mediterranean complexion, lissome, with interesting bulges
forming under her clothes.  She had an air of aristocracy about her, a
snobbishness born perhaps of being the daughter of one of the
successful farmers and a local schoolteacher.  I held no hopes outside
fantasy of ever talking to her beyond what was required by school, much
less  81 touching her, kissing her the way I wanted.

Debbie, though, was much more down-to-earth, closer to my middleclass
status, one imparted not by income, but by being a member of a
clergyman's family.  Some people back then liked to see their preachers
poor, perhaps believing it made them more "godly."  The only effect I
can remember was that it made my dad take on extra work when someone
needed help rewiring a house, or getting the crops harvested on time,
or whatever.  Even then, they were careful to pay him less than they
would have paid a regular electrician or farmhand, lest they cause him
to lose his divinely inspired spirituality and become worldly.

Righteous bastards.

Having absolutely no idea of how to begin an approach, I foolishly took
out my frustrations with a bit of doggerel I learned from an older,
big-city cousin, by putting Debbie's name in and passing it around to
my friends: Down in the valley where the cool wind blows, There lay
Debbie without any clothes.

Along came Kelly, a-swingin'a chain.

He saw Debbie, and out it came!

Three months passed and all was well.

Six months passed, and she began to swell Nine months passed, and out
they came: Six little bastards, swingin'a chain!

My male classmates loved it Debbie most definitely didn't!  Somehow I
always suspected the little queer in the class) she got hold of the
poem.  Before I knew anything was wrong, I was in the principal's
office, manfully trying to deny my guilt but I was damned by my own
sloppy handwriting on the paper I broke down and tearfully admitted my
crime, hoping for mercy.

That word did not exist for Benton Koch, the slender German
administrator/teacher.  His rather bulging blue yes fixed me from under
his blond flat-top, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he
proceeded to lecture me for the entire duration of lunch hour.  "James,
I am very disappointed to know that you, of all people, would write
something so filthy and nasty as this!  Where did you learn this
trash!

No, don't answer me.  It doesn't matter.  I just want you to sit there
and listen to me without interrupting& then this afternoon you can make
a public confession to the class and apologize to Miss-" (what was her
last name?  I can't remember!) "You need to clean up your mind, boy!

Girls are special, something that real men protect and cherish and
nurture.  How would you feel if you found someone had written something
like this about your mother?

But then, it probably wouldn't bother you, would it?  Nasty boys like
you are so dirty-minded that they think bad thoughts about their
mothers!

I should take your pants down and stretch you across my lap and spank
your bare bottom until you can't walk!  People that write things like
this and tell dirty jokes are trash!  You'd better straighten out or
you'll grow up to go to jail or the insane asylum, the kind of places
where they put people like you, people who-" "No!"  I wanted to scream,
"It's not like that Really!  I love Debbie, but I don't know how to say
it!  I'm afraid; afraid she'd laugh at me, that my friends would laugh
at me, that she wouldn't love me back, that-" Instead I cowered in the
corner of his office, just knowing that everyone in the school could
hear him and would revel in my shame.  I made the confession, and the
apology, and forever gave up hope of Debbie being my girlfriend.  I
gave up hope of any girl in that school, that town, that county, maybe
the world, wanting to have anything to do with me after being publicly
branded a sexual deviate.

"Okay, that's another time you were hurt.  why " Y" "I deserved it."

"Did you, now?"

James leapt to the defense of those around him, the people who were
"better" than he was, members of the "accepted social order."

"Yeah!  It was an awful thing to do!  I was a terrible person for
it."

'Oh, really.?  A silly little poem that you personalized?  Do you think
it made Debbie turn into a prostitute, or a lesbian, or do you think
she even remembers it, now?  That closet Nazi they called a principal
was a repressed jerkoff, a child abuser, maybe even a pedophile without
the guts to do anything more than abuse his power!

Your mother thought so."

"Hey, be fair!  It was the attitude of the times, the early
post-Kennedy times, and that part of the world was still living in the
Eisenhower era!  Nobody there had even heard of Vietnam, we all watched
'Leave It to Beaver' and 'Donna Reed,' and our greatest ambition was to
marry our high-school sweetheart and have kids and a house-go to work
in an office every day, play baseball in the back yard with our sons,
and-" "bullshit!  Maybe you didn't know it then, since you rarely saw
anything but books, comics, television cartoons, or westerns, but now
you know better!  Half those well-to-do churchgoers out in the country
had special plans once a month; after church, they'd meet in a house
just down the road where they'd have a few drinks, then go home with
each others'spouses.  Your own father was screwing half the young women
in the congregation, including Johnny's mother.  He was probably doing
it that afternoon while John showed you something else to use your
weenie for besides peeing in gopher holes.  You two spent a lot of time
in that car by yourselves, didn't you?  How long does it take to select
a few hymns?"

"Stop it!  Just stop!"

-Oh, it hurts, does it?  Maybe that fact alone means something!

Maybe you've been so willing to see yourself as a culprit that you
never realized you might be a victim!"

"Dammit, my parents loved me!  Leave them out of this!"

"C'mon.  It doesn't mean they didn't love you!  But that's what you
think, isn't it?  Deep down inside, you wonder."

'No!  No!  If I thought that, I'd deserve to die, right now!  They were
wonderful-I mean, all things considered, they did what they thought was
right.  If I thought they didn't love me that would mean I don't really
love them and that ... that .  . ."

James reached for the shaving kit, desperate for an anodyne, but his
emotions betrayed him, his hands shaking so much that he couldn't hold
the bottle, much less perform the delicate operation of shooting up.

all he could do was to once again bury his face in his hands, sobbing
through the muscular paralysis of cataplexy, hating himself more each
minute as his denial crumbled under the onslaught of his ruthless side,
the one forcing him to confront memories and analyses he'd thought
safely buried.

Eventually, as do all things, the crying jag passed.  The tears dried
up, muscular control tentatively returned, and the catharsis of release
brought James up a ways from the depths of gloom and despair into which
his soul had descended.  He managed a wry grin at himself in the wall
mirror at his side.

"God, you look awful!  Huh, that desk clerk charged me extra because he
thought I had a broad with me.  Wonder what he'd think of the kind of
fucking I'm really getting in here?"

The mental linage brightened his spirits a little more.

"Well, I hear 'no pain, no gain-all the time, now.  If its reciprocal
is true, then I'm gaining like a sumbitch tonight!"

He shuffled to the bathroom to relieve his bladder and wipe his face
with a cool washcloth, holding it to his sore eyes for a minute,
grateful for the balm.

After returning to his seat in front of the damning legal pad, he felt
steady enough to inject again.  As soon as enough time passed for the
latest puncture to clot, he straightened his arm and removed the small
wad of blood-stained cotton, cleaning up any traces on his skin with
the alcohol swab first used to prepare for the injection.  He put all
such little pieces of evidence carefully away in the plastic bagette in
the shaving kit.

James felt no need to write anything down, and resumed his heart
to-self conversation: "So, smartass, I hate my parents, huh?  Why do
you say that?"

"Maybe not hate, but they have disappointed you in the past.

Every parent does that to a child, but not every child refuses to
recall those emotions and deal with them."

'Shit!  Where'd you learn to be a shrink?"

'Remember watching all those 'Donahue' and Oprah shows?  C'mon, you were
there.  Dig back-why do you never call your mother by her first name?

Even have trouble remembering it sometimes?  Are you hiding more from
yourself.  You already had pretty warped, distorted ideas about girls
before you got near the eighth grade.  What else happened?"

"I don't know.  Why should I hate my mother?  That's sick!"

"Oh, you know all right, you just don't want to remember yet.

Let's look at your last question a little more.  How about the time she
'abandoned you?  You blamed her for leaving when you were fourteen
years old, but was it her fault?  Think back ...

It was a Sunday afternoon, cold and raining in the late fall of 1965.

We were again in a parish where the pastor's office had to be in the
parsonage, since the church had no room for one.  This one was
upstairs, just outside my bedroom, my safe room where I built model
cars and dreamed of motorcycles, minibikes, girls, guns-all sorts of
things that were important to fourteen-year-old boys in the small-town
Kansas of the sixties.  I was lying across the bed, reading a comic
book that specialized in hot-rod stories when I first heard it from
downstairs.

At first I didn't quite believe my ears.  It sounded like my parents
were shouting at each other, something I couldn't remember hearing
anytime in my life.  Then I had to believe it as the door at the bottom
of the stairs opened and their angry voices accompanied stomping feet
as they climbed to the office.  I was so panicked at the sudden
disruption of my concept of our family that their words didn't register
in my mind; I only heard the hatred and the pain as Mom screamed at
Dad, and he replied in that powerfully sarcastic voice he could use
when really angry about something.  This was the first time I had ever
heard its full force directed at my mother.

I jumped up, opened the door, and went out into the office just as Dad
pulled a pair of heavy wire cutters out of a desk drawer.  in my
confusion I first thought he was going to stab Mom with them, or cut
his own throat or something but he removed his wedding band and began
to cut it into pieces, saying that he was going to melt it down into a
cross to symbolize the burden of his marriage.

They both stopped and looked at me when they realized I was in the
room.  Then, in a tight voice, Mom said that she was moving out going
to the not-so-little Kansas town of Pittsburg to live and work, and
that I would have to choose whether to come with her or stay with
Dad.

I had little time to think it over, but first of all, I worshiped my
father-he was so brilliant I couldn't believe he could do any wrong;
any appearance of such just had to be a misunderstanding on my part,
Then there was the matter of leaving the small-town school, the kind I
had gone to all my life, leaving my new friends, and getting buried in
the anonymity of a large one.  I'd have to go to junior high, not high
school.  At the time, my choice seemed obvious.  I know it hurt Mom.

it took a few weeks to understand the complicated situation.

It seems that Dad had been married before he met my mother, the
marriage quickly ended in a strange way.  When Lucinda and Dad went on
their honeymoon, her hymen was so thick and strong that Dad couldn't
consummate the marriage.  Once he told me, "I should've finished her
off by hand, or eaten her out or something.  She was so eager and I was
so horny that I tried for three days to get through her cherry.  I
didn't realize that a doctor could have cured it with a little,
almost-painless slice of a scalpel.  Instead, we were frustrated as
hell.

The fourth day after we were married, I came home and found her in bed
with a neighbor.  A woman.  The pain and futility made her decide They
agreed to annul the marriage since it had never been consummated.

Lucinda was to take care of the paperwork They lost contact witheach
other for many years, until Lucinda called my father about a year
before the big fight She had never filed the papers, and she thought
that Dad should know that they were still legally married!

That meant that my parents weren't ... I was a bastard.

Dad took advantage of this situation to start regularly seeing a woman
in Kansas City.  I didn't understand why at firs she was not
particularly good-looking-rather ugly, in fact Later, I found out that
she was a skilled fellatrix, something my mother refused to do, or did
only reluctantly.

The argument that awful Sunday happened because this woman had driven
down from Kansas City to attend church services and introduced herself
to Mom.  Gawd.

Mom moved out Dad married the woman in KC I got my driver's license so
I could help out on the three-hundred-mile round trips up there, and I
met her daughter, now my step-sister.  it was "Ugh at first sight" The
girl had her nose elevated so high most of the time that she would have
drowned in a rainstorm were it not for umbrellas.  Her face was rather
sharp, her expression usually cynical, but she had tits and an ass that
wouldn't quill I soon found that her brains stopped at rock music and
movies-she was constantly in peril of flunking out of school, yet she
had the gall to suggest that I was "'stupid" because I cared more about
science and math than wearing the latest fashions!

I never met my older step-brother because he was usually in jail for
serious traffic violations.  "That Woman"divorced her first husband
because he constantly got drunk and beat her up; once he pulled a
pistol and tried to make her have sex with his German shepherd.

Even now, my memories of that period are fragmentary of course, there
was a scandal in my little town as soon as the story came out as such
stories invariably do in small towns.  Eventually things sorted
themselves out Dad divorced That Woman, confessed to the congregation
and the church authorities, received forgiveness, remarried my mother,
we again became a happy little family, just me and my parents, since my
sisters were all married and gone by this time.  Everything was perfect
just like it was.  Yeah, right ...

"So?"

'So what?"

'So what do you think?"

James pulled a tissue from the motel-supplied box and wiped his eyes,
muscles again weak with emotion.

"Jeeze!  I don't know what to think!  Barbara tried to be nice to me,
tried to win my affection, even wanted to give me a car!  But all I
could see when I looked at her was someone who destroyed my home,
suddenly made me an outcast.  When the kids at school found out.

... Aw, shit, MY FATHER LEFT MY MOTHER BECAUSE BARBARA WOULD SUCK HIS
DICK!  SHE WAS DIRTY, FILTHY, A NASTY WOMAN!"

"Hey, quiet down!  You want to get us thrown out of here?"

Again James sobbed into his hands, but continued his conversation in
mumbles.

"How does all this add up to you?"

"More women brought me pain.  Lucinda, by making me a bastard, a child
of unmarried parents.  My mother, for forcing me to choose between her
or my father-" "Would you feel better if someone else had made that
choice instead of leaving it up to you?"

James's face came up, tears once again stopped by the process of
conversation.  "I don't know.  No, then I would have resented whoever
made the choice, no matter what it was.  What I hated was the fact that
the choice was there, that someone had to make it at all."

James sat, voice and thoughts silent for a moment, feeling.

"Besides, I resented Mom before that happened."

"Why?  What did she do to you?  Do you resent her just because she was
a woman?"

"No!  It-I don't know.  Maybe!  I couldn't understand her any better
than any other woman.  I don't like women, and I don't like men enough
to turn queer!"

"So, there has to be a beginning for everything.  What is it?"

Where did this pattern start?  With Johnny in the car?  No, that must
not have made much impression on me, or I guess I'd be lusting after
men.  Debbie in eighth grade?  Uh-uh, before that My sisters?

Despite that little "be a girl" game that I remember so well, I don't
think it was very traumatic, or had a lasting effect Actually, it was
kind of funny, now that I think of it-just kids exploring their
differences.  No, rival siblings that we were, my sisters were enough
older than me that we didn't interact much on any deep level Not in any
mind-bending sense, at least What was the first real screwing over I
got from a girl?  it had to be ...

Turning the pad to a fresh sheet, James wrote as he thought, and
thought as he wrote.  "When I was ten, our household was turned upside
down.  My Uncle Charlie and Aunt Joan were leaving the Air Force and
moving to Texas.  Charlie was retiring on a medical disability
(narcolepsy, just like mine), and Joan had severe rheumatoid
arthritis.

She was to get extensive surgery on her hips and knees, replacing the
joints with metal and plastic.  It was very dangerous surgery for the
early sixties.

"They would be unable to care for their three daughters for some 
time, so they had arranged for the girls to stay with us, paying for
their support and care."

I didn't really know Karen, Reagan, and Mary.  For most of their young
lives and mine they had lived far away-Germany, Florida Alaska.

Karen was nine, Reagan seven, and Mary two.  I soon learned to hate
then their parents had been unable to discipline them due to their
disabilityes, and they were incredible brats!  Worse, they got away
with it They got into my comic book collection, colored in my other
books, took my Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs and played dolls with them,
losing pieces and breaking others!  They'd sneak up and hit me, and I
didn't dare retaliate under threat of having five of my precious comic
books torn up and burned for each punch I threw Karen was always
sneaking around, coming into the bathroom while I was in the tub,
pretending she didn't know I was there then standing and giggling at
me.  Reagan was a terrible liar, always making up stories to get me or
her sisters into trouble.  Mary was too young for much planned
brattiness, but she screamed, cried, him and bit people whenever she
didn't get her way.

I wanted to see first-hand what those girlboy differences were that
Johnny kept mentioning.  I hated not knowing something that someone
else knew I kept trying to talk one of the two older girls into
"playing doctor," or taking a leak or a poop somewhere outside and
letting me watch, but they'd promise to do it in exchange for some
favor or toy, then back out after I'd paid up.  Of course, I couldn't
complain to my parents about it "Then there was that April Saturday
morning, just a month or so after my eleventh birthday.  It was
early.

Nobody was awake but me and Karen, who I could hear in the next room,
moving around.

I went in, and she was in bed, coloring in a Huckleberry Hound coloring
book.  One of mine!  I tried to take it back but she said she'd scream
and say I was trying to take her clothes off.  Then she giggled and
said that sounded like a fun idea anyway.

'Karen pulled the sheets back, and I could see she had her little girl
shortie pajamas on; I was wearing my cowboy pjs with all the western
cattle brands printed on the material.  She told me to get under the
sheets with her and she'd show me what I'd wanted to see all this
time."I did, then she told me to take off my bottoms and my
undershorts.

Expecting another one-sided deal, I argued a little, but she promised
she'd really do it this time, just like she used to do for her daddy.

Once I was naked under the sheets from the waist down, she reached over
and started pulling and rubbing my little pecker, making it hard.

Then she slid her panties off and let me look at her thing.

Although the light coming through the sheet was sufficient, I couldn't
really see much, just a tucked-in groove.  I Wd back down with my head
out from under the covers and let her rub me some more.  Karen asked me
to rub her down there and make her feel good like her daddy did,
explaining that we would have to keep this game a big secret, just like
she and her daddy kept their game secret.  She said if anyone found
out, we would be in big trouble and go to jail.

"I don't remember if I really enjoyed much of it after that.  Her words
about jail'made me nervous.  I knew that little kids like us didn't
really go to jail, but I'd seen enough about reform schools on the 'Our
Gang' comedies they ran on television.  I certainly didn't want to go
there!  I followed instructions and rubbed her as she rubbed me, but I
couldn't tell much about what I was feeling.  Despite my experiences
with Johnny, I didn't really think of this as sex.  Mostly, I was just
curious.  I wanted to know how boys and girls were different, to find
out myself rather than from what Johnny told me.

'Then Mom walked in-" Mom, oh God, you didn't know what you were doing
to me!  You yanked me out of Karen's bed, blistered my bare bottom, and
told me I was evil, that I was dirty, that touching girls there was a
terrible sin and would make me grow up to be a crazy man who would be
locked up in the crazy house, and that girls were special and men
ruined them when they tried to do dirty things to them and I should
never try to do that to a girl ever again in my life and girls were to
be cherished and set upon pedestals above boys and, "As sure as my name
is is ... what?

James pulled his shaky hands away from the pad.  There it was: the
memory he had buried for so many years.  He had received severe
punishment: his toys were taken away for a month, all his comics were
destroyed, he had to go to his room and stay there as soon as he got
home from school for two weeks except for meals and bathroom time.

And Karen, who had started it, got comforting from his own mother about
"the nasty things Jimmy was making you do."

Mom!  How could you?  After that I was terrified of girls-I might nun
them with my dirty mind, my filthy hands!  I never knew what to do
around them.  Obviously, you couldn't take what they said at face
value.  You had to check, be careful you really under-stood what they
mean and even then you still couldn't trust them.  Dammit Mom, we were
just kids, and kids are curious!  It didn't mean all that much until
you made it mean the destruction of the rest of my life!

Tears once again flowed down James's cheeks as suppressed emotions of
fear, pain, and hatred of the female half of the human race-especially
his mother-came forward.  So that was why he resented his mother!

His second voice now came in, speaking softly through the sobs.

"Is it fair?"

"What?"

"To blame your mother, to hold her responsible for reacting the way she
had been trained, the normal reaction for that time and place?"

"Dammit, it wasn't right!"  His voice grew louder.

"Maybe not, but what else would you have expected in 1962?  Do you
think she knew what she was doing to you?"

"She blamed it all on me.  She never even asked!  She knew Karen was a
lying little shit, but me, her own son, had to be the one to blame.

She was ready to believe the worst of me, and the best of her."

"Why?  Because of the way she was brought up, the experiences in her
LIFE, maybe?  She could no more avoid the consequences of those things
than you can avoid what happened to you.  There was something very sick
behind the'Ozzie and Harriet'facade of those times."

"I know.  That's what so bad!  It's like I'm the butt of some gigantic
cosmic joke!  Nobody to blame for it, nobody can fix it, I've just
gotta stand on the stage in front of the Universe with pie all over my
face and listen to the laughter!"

"Okay.  We're getting something, going somewhere.  So far what do you
have?"

'I distrust women.  I fear them.  Every one I've known and cared about
in my life has hurt me somehow."

"Why?"

The question again.  Every way James turned, it still came back to
"why."  Is this the inevitable end of every thread?  Was this the same
"why?"  Maybe not ...

"Why did those women hurt you?  Did they mean to?  Were they evil?"

"Yes!  No.  Sometimes, maybe ...

"Okay, look at each one and decide.  What about Wendy, the girl from
the prom?"

"Bitch!  She used me, then threw me away and laughed about it!"

"Yeah, but why,.?"

"Ummm, I dunno.  Maybe she was just stupid, more foolish than evil.

She couldn't see my shining qualities, maybe?"

"Uh-huh.  Right.  Well, whatever reason, she didn't act much
differently than a lot of other high-school girls acted at times, did
she?"

"No."

"And Barbara, your stepmother?"

"Damn!  I suppose she was just looking for someone when she met Dad.

Maybe the challenge of a married man, a preacher, was too much.

Tony always had an eye for fresh pussy, anyway.  It could be that she
needed to prove to herself that she was still attractive, still a
woman?"

"Sounds reasonable.  So she wasn't evil, just human."

.Yeah."

'How about the others.  Were they just human nature?"

"Maybe.  I don't know if that helps much, though, if it means I can
continue to expect that all the women I meet will be that way!"

"Well, hold that thought.  What about Sheila?"

"Oh, God!  I trusted her with my secrets, my feelings, my love-I gave
her access to every mental button I own, and she shit all over me with
her'God this'and'God that'and-" "But did she do it because she was
evil?  Could she help herself.?"

'Huh?  Of course!  She just had to stay the way she was!"

"Really.  Nobody changes, nobody grows?"

"She went backwards!"  James pounded the desk hard enough to make the
gun bounce, then realized with a start that he was angry at himself.

He resented his rational side.  It is often easier to hold simple anger
toward someone than it is to understand them and give up your anger.

This isn't easy, is it?  Maybe that means it's worth doing.  I hope
so.

He got up, drank another glass of water, gathered himself, and carried
on: "Okay, so it seems, but was she ever really free of her
upbringing?

How easy was it for you to break away from everything that was pounded
into you in Sunday School and church, week after week, year after
year?"

"Not very.  Dammit, it would be so nice to believe that all I have to
do is follow a few simple rules, and let God take over all the
suffering for my fuckups!  But that's bargain-basement religion,
salvation on the cheap.  I know I'm going to have to pay for the hurt,
the harm I've done others, deliberately or not, either now or after I'm
dead and before I reincarnate again!  That's the one thing that's
keeping me from just picking up that gun right now!"

His hand closed on the butt, then released it, convulsively.

"All right, take it easy.  Sheila led you to believe that she was free,
or at least ready to take the same steps you had taken to become
free.

Maybe she even believed it herself.  Right?"

"Yes, that sounds the most likely.  Now that you mention it, she joined
in the rituals, the holidays, but she never was quite ready to become
initiated ... I guess I deliberately ignored that, figuring she'd come
around eventually."

"Uh-huh.  But she never did, did she?"

"She tried.  She studied, we worked together with her under deep
hypnotic trance; she *saw* the Second Road, the other world that
underlies the physical; she even created and adopted her own spirit
familiar/friend, and used him to get good parking spaces, get warnings
of impending danger and trouble."

'She was a good learner when it came to the Craft.  That's why, when
you separated, you went through all the photographs and made sure there
were none of you in those she took with her, right?  You know what she
could do if she got angry enough .  .

James shuddered.  "Yes."

'But she wasn't such a good un-learner, was she?  Is that really her
fault?  When she had those bad times with her work and quit without
telling,anyone, when she went through the trauma of remembering her
childhood molestation by her brother, the rape by a new friend's older
brother, the way her parents failed to support her through any of that
nd left her feeling like she was at fault, couldn't ever put her LIFE
back together again-then you met and maybe she felt finally safe.  When
you started falling asleep involuntarily and removed yourself from the
position of some kind of solid rock she could anchor herself to-is it
really so odd that she would regress to those beliefs that had stood up
for her as a child?"

"No.  Damn.  No.  When we met, she was drifting, and I must have looked
like the Rock of Gibraltar-hell, I was big enough!  Or a reasonable
facsimile.  Then I started to crumble, and the exposed parts were made
of clay.  I never realized .  . ."

"And her parents.  Are they truly evil?"

"Oh, that's a tough one!  can't I even keep my prime villains?

No?"

James now felt rather whimsical, the psychic shock of reevaluating hard
held appraisals of people distancing him from the emotional impact.

It was a survival mechanism, a response to emotional overload.

Now he could continue more calmly, more objectively, looking into
himself from the outside.

'No, not to themselves.  Didn't Heinlein say, 'A villain is never evil
in his own eyes?"  I'm not sure I buy that for everyone, but her
parents truly-believed in what they did.  I think what they did was
wrong as hell, and based on a lifetime of self-deception and denial of
reality, but they can't help being what they are."

'Like you?"

"Like ... yeah, like me."

'So, if you can consider forgiving them, do you think you can forgive
yourself."

"Yeah.  Maybe you have a point there.  . .

"Still need that gun?"

James considered.

"Not for myself."

"Good."

James looked out the window, started, then fixed himself once more.

It was dawn.  It was time to go home.

James didn't bother unloading his truck when he pulled into the
driveway, just grabbed the shaving kit and locked the doors.

Reverend Tony and wife were surprised when James walked into the
kitchen where they were preparing their morning insulin injections,
gave them big hugs, said, "I love you, Mom and Dad!"  then went into
the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave.

The two old folks were still exchanging curious looks when he
emerged.

"Is-is something wrong."  His mother seemed worried.

'No, Mom.  I just spent all night talking with a friend, and he helped
me sort through a lot of feelings about Sheila, old hurts, the
shit-colored glasses I've been viewing the world through.  You know."

He kissed her on the cheek, then turned to go to his room.  He turned
back to face them again at the doorway, "I think things are going to be
much better from now on."

James undressed and laid down, but sleep would not come.  This time, it
was not a matter of tormenting repetition but flashes of possibility.

Finally he got up, went over to his computer, and loaded Pocket Writer
64 into the machine.

As soon as the main screen appeared, James began to write
stream-of-consciousness: "SUMMARY of What I am and Why.  I am a man who
has suffered major traumas from seemingly minor incidents at the hands
of women, ones I trusted, bitches-no, just women, normal women, normal,
hateful, sacred objects; I don't know how to talk to women.  Every time
I see them the first thing I do is undress them in my mind; young, old,
fat, skinny, attractive, ugly-it doesn't matter.  The underlying theme
of my thoughts is always sex and this causes a tension in me that I am
sure they can sense, since 'Sex is dirty' was ingrained into me from
that incident with Karen, and I continually think of women
sexually-tits, cunts, and lips with generic brains; that means I have
to perceive them as less than human, mere sex objects, receptacles fit
only to accept my sperm whenever I condescend to squirt it into them.

Gawd, what a way FOR A lot OF women to know I am seeing them!  No
wonder they back off from me if they can feel even a fraction of the
attitude my deep mind has toward them!"

His writing became more focused, a writer's habits taking over,
punctuating, structuring, yet still closely following his thoughts.  He
edited a couple of extra commas from what he'd already written, changed
a semicolon to a long dash, checked it again, then continued: 'I can
talk to one if I don't look at her, and the subject is remote from sex
or anything personal on my part, but this creates distance between us
as though we were on the phone or writing letters, the two ways I have
always been able to talk comfortably with a woman; they seem to resent
such a feeling of distance when face to face.

"Through a combination of frustration and desperation, I had my first
full sexual experience with an animal instead of a human; happenstance
and coincidence made this animal a horse-and the same lack of
socialization made this my only outlet for almost four years.

Kinsey said that what he referred to as 'animal contacts' were really
just a form of extended masturbation; someone having sex with an animal
was just using a living body the way someone else might use a nude
photo and some baby oil.  I guess that's true of me in a way; after I
got my rocks off, I didn't really care much what the animal did.

I'd just go find a horse when it was convenient, safe, and I was horny
enough to make the extra trouble worth it.  When I finally did begin an
intimate relationship with a woman, it was what I now learn to be a
very sick one.

"Pamela was a real whackO-" After fucking that little mare in the
pasture, I still considered it "secondclass sex."  Even though it was
awfully good, it was axiomatic that a woman, created by God to be man's
mate, had to be superior.  I diddled ponies when I could, but my
ultimate desire was a Real Woman.  Blind dates, the occasional fumbling
attempt to ask one out on my own nothing worked out Probably I could
have had that one fat girl that Mike set me up with-but she wanted to
show me her baby boy, and I panicked at the thought that she was just
looking for a husband, a meal ticket for herself and her child.  Then
there was that time on the beach in Galveston ...

The woman obviously wasn't very bright nor very pretty in the face, but
she had tits and a pussy, and she'd gotten a bad sunburn while wearing
a very skimpy bikini.  She asked me to put some ointment on her.  She
pointed out that somehow, she had managed to get a sunburn up between
her legs.  Trembling, I carefully spread burn creme on the insides of
her thighs, brushing against the thin cloth covering Sexual Paradise.

She moaned, and I thought I was hurting her, but she wouldn't let me
stop.  The crotch of her bottoms was getting damp.  I knew I was going
to finally get to try a woman, but then ...

Dad and Mom came back from their walk along the beach, breaking the
mood and spoiling the opportunity.  The woman later returned;
unfortunately she had her husband in tow this time.

Down the beach a couple of hundred yards was a portable corral where a
riding concessionaire kept his horses at night I made friends with the
wrangler, and he pointed out a bay mare that he said had "a bad ovary',
she stayed in heat continuously.  The owner used her to keep his stud
happy, since she'd take one anytime.  About midnight I checked it out
It was true.  Even though I had to stand on an upturned feed tub to
mesh our genitals, she fucked me silly.

I was bored, roaming around in Topeka, but it wasn't as boring as it
was back home, so I decided to make the best of it.  One of the
hometown drunks had asked me to drive him to the V.A hospital in his
car, and then take it back home.  Since we got there at seven in the
morning and had him checked in by eight I planned to at least poke
around some of the gunshops, headshops, and music stores.

it was in one of the latter on Gage Boulevard that I met Pam.  She had
a crummy, cheap, acoustic guitar, and was arguing with a clerk over the
selection of the right strings.  Eavesdropping a bit I ascertained that
her problem was that she was just learning, and it was hurting her
fingers to push the strings down against the frets on the warped neck
One of my best friends was a hot guitarist who had discussed the pros
and cons of various instruments with me at length, so I felt like
showing off Bad move.

"Hi!  I couldn't help overhearing you.  Mind if I take a look?"

Pam, a stringy-haired fat woman of about thirty with granny glasses and
a shapeless Mama Cass dress, handed me the cheap Korean import It was
obvious that no bra held up her enormous, pendulous breasts, nor
interfered with the nipples poking against the thin t-shirt I enjoyed
the jiggle surreptitiously as I fingered the strings.

They were heavy, tight and standing free of the frets due to a
combination of neck warpage and the bridge pulling up from the front of
the body.  I looked at the clerk "Have you tightened the neck?"

"Yeah, as much as I've dared.  See that bridge?  Adjust the neckbar any
more, and it'll pop right off of there, leaving nothing."

I nodded.  "That's about what I suspected."  I handed the guitar back
to Pam.  "It's difficult to learn on a really bad instrument-the extra
difficulty and pain from trying to fret this is likely to stop your
guitar playing before you get a fair chance."

Pamela was grateful for the advice, and we began talking.  Her prime
purpose for coming to the store had been to pick up some tickets for a
Rolling Stones concert in Kansas City.  She had ordered the limit and
intended to make a few bucks scalping the extra ten tickets outside the
gate.  She figured it would sell out quick and she could triple her
money.  it turned out she lived nearby, collected records, and would
love to spend a little more time with someone like me, so we went to
her place.

A one-room basement "efficiency" apartment the place was a dump with
records piled and shelved all over the place, a crummy little stereo to
play them on, and wine bottles and cigarette butts littering the
floor.

She had a calico cat named "Princess"who had a nasty attitude.

Mellowing out over a little wine and some cold hot dogs, I learned that
she had been married, then divorced shortly afterwards when her husband
had been committed to the local bughouse; she'd had sex only about a
dozen times in her life, had a stillborn baby from the marriage, and
wanted to be a rock-music promoter/producer.  She had a waterbed, the
first one I'd ever seen.

it was a strange romance from the beginning with Pam firmly in
control.

A couple of weeks later, she drove down from Topeka in her VW Beetle to
visit me.  My parents were less than thrilled to meet her.

Up in my room, rigged with a homemade stereo and speakers that
outclassed hers in every way, we sat in my old office chair-she on my
lap, destroying my legs.  I had just turned twenty-one, and got to feel
my first bare tit I was ecstatic, pinching the nipples, appreciating
the velvety heft and rubbery texture.

That first visit all I got to do was reach into the bra she was wearing
and feet On later visits I worked my way up to where she would take off
her bra and let me suck and nibble, then feel between her legs, and
finally eat her out Not until I asked her to marry me (at her
insistence) did she consent to actual intercourse.  She figuratively
had me by the dick and led me around like an unsuspecting lamb to
slaughter.

By the time matters progressed to this point my parents had moved to a
much larger small city, and I had come along.  Pam moved down there,
too, changing schools to be near her fiance.  Me.  Oog.

For the Night of Nights, I had snagged the key to the church basement
We drove over in my old '63 Chrysler, carried blankets and pillows into
the basement foyer and laid them out on the carpet I was running over
the list of foreplay instructions in my mind, determined to make this a
memorable experience.  In the meantime, Pam stripped, laid down, and
spread her legs.  "Are you gonna stick it in or just stand there all
night?"

With that, I shrugged, dropped my pants down to my ankles, knelt
between her legs, and complied with her request it felt strange to
me-sweaty, flabby thighs rubbing stickily on my hips contrasted with
memories of hard-muscled, soft-furred legs against the front of mine.

My arms were busy, elbows keeping my weight off of Pam where otherwise
I could use them to stroke flanks, hold hips, or caress a soft nose
turned back to nuzzle me.

Pam smelled.  No, she stank She talked about how much she douched, and,
later, I watched her do so, but there was always a miasma of stale
sweat and a sour, fishy odor-I performed oral sex on her because she
said she enjoyed it but she never reciprocated.  In fact she never once
actually touched my penis with her hands, and she would aways douche
immediately after sex I couldn't help but contrast the smell,and taste
of Pam with my erstwhile equine companions ... in stroke books I'd
often read about eating pussy, and how good it was for the woman, and
how much men'enjoyed doing it so I tried it when I was about
eighteen.

This, of course, meant with a horse.  it didn't turn me on that much,
but it didn't bother me nearly as much as I had expected, either.  The
mares appreciated it Horse pussy smelled and tasted earthy, musky, but
in no way was it repulsive, disgusting or nasty.

Pam's was.  No matter if we had just come out of the shower, she still
smelled and tasted of stale urine, with a strong fishy odor and a hint
of rotten cheese.

Nonetheless, I was looking forward to the actual coitus, convinced that
a "real woman" had to be better than any animal, by definition.

The first surprise of the night came when I couldn't tell if I was
inside her.  The difference between rubbing around on the outside and
actually getting inside was minuscule.  She was loose-looser than any
horse I had ever had before or since, from miniatures whose legs I had
to hold off the ground, to large quarterhorse mares that required a
ladder, a stump, or a fence to stand on.  Pam had no muscle control,
certainly nothing to match the convulsive twitching of cayuse cunt The
inside of her pussy was smooth and sloppy; it felt sort of like
screwing a piece of warm, raw liver.

The detailed comparisons are irrelevant-the point is, my first woman
was not only not "magnificently better" than a horse, she wasn't nearly
as good!  I pumped a while, then faked an orgasm and took her back to
her apartment My relationship with Pam lasted just long enough for me
to discover that she let me have sex only when she wanted something
special from me, like when she wrote hot checks for phonograph records
and expected me to cover them-almost a year of "Pain and Misery," my
parents' private name for her.

I lost track of Pam about a year after I left her, but heard she was
pursuing her career goals.  A mutual girlfriend told me of her
gangbanging several rock groups after concerts, handing out blow jobs,
drugs, anal sex, or anything else the stars wanted, all things she
denied me.

I still hold the opinion that without the drugs none of the Toadies,
much less the stars, would have come near her.  You've heard of "Ugly
enough to stop -a clock"?  Pam's mug could stop a fucking sundial!

James continued to type.

"I was still determined to be 'normal' as far as sex went.  There was
Claudia from Manhattan-a sweet, intelligent girl, almost totally
blind.

We had extended visits over a period of a couple of years but didn't
have too much in common.  She loved to sleep together or dance naked,
but we never got beyond oral sex since she was upset about being female
and felt that intercourse would fix her sexual identity in a pattern
she resented.  I'd eat her out, but I felt so unsure of myself that
when she offered to lick me off, I turned her down.  I guess I still
thought it was 'dirty' and didn't want to 'pollute' her.  I was still
pretty sick, since I thought she was 'too nice' to do something like
that.  It hurt when we broke it off for the last time, but it was
bittersweet.

I remember her with a sort of romantic poignancy."

James looked at the screen.  He was really collecting the memories, on
paper and in his head.  He reached for the shaving kit, but was
distracted by an outside intrusion.

A knock at the door.  "Are you all right, son?"

"Yes, Mom, I'm just typing out some dialogue for a short story!

Please let me get it down while it's still fresh."

"Well, okay.  We're just worried that you're acting kind of
strangely."

"I'm all right, Grace."

That did it.

The door opened without invitation and James's mother stood there with
a shocked expression, Tony behind her with a quizzical half-smile on
his face.

"Grace?  You've never called me that before!"

James walked over and embraced his mother.  "I know.  It's a long
story, and some of it isn't very nice, but I want you both to know that
I found a lot of buried memories and I understand.  I understand a
whole lot that I didn't before.  I love you both very much and things
are going to get better.  Okay?"  Mrs. Grace Falabella looked
carefully into her son's eyes, and finally seemed to like what she saw
there.

"Okay, James.  It looks like you can use some-sleep."

Yes, I think so.  It's been a long night.  It's been a long life.

But tomorrow's another day."

James awoke about an hour before sunset, feeling more at peace with
himself than he could remember.  He dressed in clean work clothes,
brushed his teeth, took care of other needs, then came to the kitchen
and sat down with a glass of iced tea.

Tony looked at him.  "You look pretty good tonight.  Feeling okay?"

"Yes, thanks.  Where's Mom?"

"She took a walk with Mrs. Windward from next door.  She'll be back
soon.  Something you need with her?"

'Well, I think I need to have some long talks with both of you, but
they're not so important they can't wait.  Still, I'd like to ask you
some things, and I want you to answer as though I was some stranger who
came to you as a minister, a counselor, and not your son.  Okay!.?"

Tony grinned.  "That might not be easy, but I'll try.  Shoot!"

James collected his thoughts for a moment, took a deep breath, then
plunged ahead.  "Okay.  Suppose someone has a habit, or a desire, or a
yearning that doesn't really cause any harm, but society takes a dim
view of people who act on that desire.  Now, remember, I'm just a
casual acquaintance, and I'm asking in general.  You don't know what
specific thing I'm talking about."

Tony looked down at his coffee cup, stirred it for a moment, then took
a sip.  "I suppose it would depend to some degree on the desire in
question.  Is it something that really harms no one?  Does it harm the
person who does it, like drugs or alcohol?"

"Uh, no, nothing like that.  Those almost always hurt people around
them, even if the user doesn't realize it.  Suppose that the person got
this habit through a chain of events that were pretty much normal in
themselves, but happened with a particular timing and in such a
combination that they had the result of imbuing the person with desires
that he sees nothing wrong with intellectually, but still bother him
emotionally because he knows other people think they are wrong.  Is he
better off to try to ignore or bury the desires so he can consider
himself 'normal' by the standards of the public, even when he knows
that he's denying what he is, and the inner conflict is tearing him
apart, or should he ignore convention and do what makes him happy.?"

Tony looked long at James.  "This is you, but I don't know just what
you're talking about, right?"  James nodded.  A longer pause.

"Well, is it something important to you?"

James considered, lips pursed.  "I think so.  I think I understand a
lot more about what and who I am, and why, than I did when I got out of
bed yesterday morning."

Tony drummed his fingers on the table a few times.  "This is about
horses."  It was a statement, not a question.

James took a swallow of his tea.  "Yes.  I know you're not thrilled
about it, sometimes I'm not either, but that's the way I am, take it or
leave it!"

'Hey, why so hostile?  Didn't I try to cover for you, give you a place
to 'do your thing' without getting caught?"

'Yeah, later on.  But remember when I first told you about it, when I
graduated high school, just before I left for the summer with the
wheat-cutting crew?"

Tony stared at his coffee cup.  "Hmmm.  I wasn't very sympathetic then,
was I?"

"Well, no, I wouldn't say so.  All you could talk about was what might
happen to you."  A wry look on his face, Tony said, "I remember.

I told you to stop it immediately, because if you got caught it would
make me look bad.  In retrospect, that wasn't a very supportive way for
me to have put it, was it?"

'No, not really.  I felt bad because I had a problem, and you seemed
more worried about your job than me."

"I suppose maybe I was.  I came very close to getting thrown out of the
ministry during that crazy business with Barbara, you know."

"Yes, and I understand that was on your mind a lot back then.

See?  that's what I meant when I said that the things that bent me out
of shape might have been mistakes, but they were natural ones.

I don't blame you for how you reacted to the news that I was balling
the neighbors'livestock-what should I have expected?"

"Maybe you might have expected some sympathy, some understanding
instead of self-centered concerns."should have talked more to you about
it then, found out why."

Maybe."  James paused for another swig of tea.  "But remember, I told
you the day before I left.  That didn't really give you much time to
think about it; by the time I got back, you had worked through it,
remembered what you did to that milk cow when you were young, and were
ready to help me keep from being caught.  Since you worked it out in
your mind, I suppose it just didn't occur to you that I still had a lot
of questions, was doubting myself."

Tony looked down.  "I feel bad about that, son.  You see, I guess I
treated it as sort of a co-conspiracy-you were doing something you
shouldn't; I was still sneaking off to see Barbara-we were in cahoots
and could watch each others' backs.  It was a lousy thing to do to
you."

"No!"Tony jumped as James slammed his hand on the table.  "That's what
I'm trying to say!  It's not your fault!  It's not Mom's fault!

It's not Sheila's, or Karen's, or my, or anyone else's fault!

It's just the way things are, the way I am!  The only thing important
about why I am this way is for me to understand it!

"Now I do, at least a lot of it.  Now I understand why I don't, why I
can't trust women enough to have healthy emotional relationships with
them.  Now I understand enough to quit blaming myself for being
something I have to be, something that I can't help.  Now I can quit
fighting myself because I've been carrying guilt and resentment toward
others that make me feel bad for feeling them.

"Sure, I had it rough in spots, but it could have been worse.  I had
parents who loved me and tried to understand their odd child who would
rather read than play with the other kids, who couldn't manage money to
save himself, who lived very different public and private lives."

Tony looked thoughtful.  "Your mother and I tried our best, but we made
some mistakes raising you."

"Yeah, you did.  So what?  Every parent does that.  I've wasted years
and years resenting those mistakes, and that's hurt me more than the
things themselves ever did.  I finally sat down and made a long list,
then tried to understand them.  You want to know something funny.?

When I got old enough to understand that you had the skills to have
made a very comfortable living in machinist's work, that you could
design and build almost anything, but instead chose to work for pennies
in a pulpit, I resented being poor.  I resented having to grow up in a
goldfish bowl with every small-town eye focused directly on me to see
if I was setting a good example for the local brats, or trying to find
out if I knew the latest details of some local scandal just because I
was the preacher's kid.

"But how were you to know what it would be like?  You took up a
profession that was highly respected and tried your best to raise me
and my sisters right.  You didn't know that one of the surest
prescriptions for growing up warped is to be a preacher's kid,
especially a boy!  On one side, you're expected to be a little angel
and lots of kids your age won't trust you; on the other hand, there are
those who consider it a challenge to see if they can lead you astray
plus the people who always said that the wildest kids in town were
preachers' kids.

It's not your fault that I tried my best to fulfill both sides'
expectations!"

James stopped and took a few breaths to calm down.  "I finally think I
understand that I need to accept myself the way I again, and stop
beating up on myself for feeling the way I do about certain things.

I realize that most of the people who hurt me or shaped me couldn't
help themselves for reacting the way they did, any more than I can help
myself for being a social misfit.  I've forgiven them, or I'm trying
really hard to, just as I'm forgiving myself.  Instead of trying to be
what I'm not, I think it'l work a lot better if I recognize my
shortcomings and work to deal with them, rather than try to fool the
whole world and, more importantly, myself."

He got up, mixed another glass of instant tea and grabbed a couple of
cold hot dogs from the refrigerator, then returned to the table and
occupied his mouth with the food.

Tony asked, "Do you regret your marriage?"

James chewed thoughtfully.  "I'm not sure, but I don't think so.

I never told you this, but just before I met Sheila I was negotiating
with a friend at work.  He was living on a rented farm outside of
Chanute, and planned to move.  I was going to rent the farm and move
out there from my apartment, and he had a little Shetland mare he was
going to sell me.  I had already tried her out for compatibility, and
she seemed like she'd train okay.  I've wondered sometimes what would
have happened if I had done that instead of falling into the sack with
Sheila and knocking her up.  Who knows?

"Mostly, though, I suppose I'm glad we had a few good years, but I sure
regret the pain we gave each other later.  I love my kids as best I
know how and wish they didn't have to go through this mess, either.

But what's done is done, 'The moving finger writes,'and all that
crap.

What's important is what I decide to do now."

"Are you clear on the choices you have?"

'I think so.  I think I can stay miserable and keep slowly killing
myself, or I can look for another woman to ruin through trying to live
with someone who won't give her what she needs.

'These are the socially acceptable solutions.  Or I can be what I am
and be happy with myself regardless of everyone else's opinions.

What do you think?"

Tony swallowed the last of his coffee and looked squarely at James.

"When I first entered the ministry, most of the answers were very clear
to me; if I didn't know them, I thought I knew where to find them.

Then I started dealing with people who didn't fit my preconceived ideas
of right and wrong, people who were nice people, but had problems I
never imagined.  Later I discovered that I could be a sinner, too.

"Nowadays the difference between right and wrong seems pretty blurry.

Frankly, I can't see how having a sexual partner who won't give you a
disease, who won't get pregnant and wind up on welfare, who won't write
bad checks, or spend the rent money on new wallpaper, or do the things
that people often do to other people-how that is against the public
interest, or so terribly wrong.

"What I see as truly evil is tearing yourself up inside so badly that
you try to hide from yourself behind a chemical curtain just because
somebody else who doesn't know diddly-squat about you or your situation
says that anyone who feels the way you do is sick, and should be put
away somewhere.

'I think my advice to you is to worry about public opinion only enough
to keep your tastes and actions from blatant public knowledge.

If you aren't affecting the public good, then it's none of the public's
damned business what you do.  More people would live longer, healthier,
happier lives if they told Mrs.  Grundy to go take a flying fuck!"

Father and son grinned at each other over the table.

-Thanks, Dad.  I kind of figured that out for myself last night, but
I'm glad to hear you say it.  I've been pretty screwed up for a long
time, and lately not very nice to you and Mom sometimes, and I've hurt
other people trying to be something I'm not, and not be something I
am.

The worst of it has been watching myself treat my kids and family as if
they were intruders on my life, trying to stay hidden behind a
shield.

I think it's time to just be me."

"Son, I believe you're right.  What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm not exactly sure yet, but I'll think of something."

James went outside, unloaded his truck, and puttered away a couple of
hours cleaning his shop.  He fixed a few small pieces of gear that had
been cluttering up the shelves, read, smoked, and injected himself.

He used much less that night than usual without even noticing the
fact.

He read an old book on horse care that he found stuck away with other
high-school memorabilia in a cardboard box.  He went to bed early,
easily falling asleep.

 CHAPTER EIGHT April 1987 It was Sunday, a beautiful spring day; a
few fluffy clouds nicely set off a blue sky punctuated by robins busy
building their nests in James's trees.  He felt rested and refreshed,
so much so that he neglected to inject himself.  No matter, he could
always do so later.

Right now, James had business to attend to.  After further amazing his
parents by joining them for breakfast, he drove off for the rundown
community near Joplin where he remembered seeing all the houses with
pony pens in the yards.

Today, only one of the pens had any animals, but there the selection
looked promising.  Nobody responded to his.  knocks on the door of the
little trailer house, and no vehicles, at least ones in running
condition, were parked in the driveway.  James respected the locks on
the gate, but saw no harm in looking over the fence.

He spied a white, shaggy mare that brought back memories.

She looks a lot like little Goldie, the pony I used to prefer back home
when I was in college.  The odd family that owned her lived in a big
old house that must have been pretty fancy in its day, but was really
run down by then.  The man worked in a factory, his wife looked twenty
years older than she was, and his kids could have easily graced any
backwoods cabin in the Ozarks.  Putting aside intellectual prejudice I
made friends with them and found out they were nice people, just going
to prove again that appearances aren't always reliable.

We'd sit around the big kitchen table, rolling cigarettes in an old
Bugler machine, or playing cards for matches.  Leo would tell stories
about his World War II days in the South Pacific, and I'd tell some of
the dirty jokes I'd learned from Dad.  We had a great time!

His place was less than two blocks from my house, and it had no lawn.

What it had was a barbed-wire fence, a shed, and a smaller pen inside
the fence.  His lot held anywhere from two to six ponies at a time,
almost always mares.

I'd sneak down there after dark, and have sex with Goldie, my
favorite.

I selected her over any of the others because she didn't mind having
her tail lifted and her vagina probed.  One thing I learned you have to
be careful in choosing your sex partner-it's difficult and dangerous to
rape a horse!  Goldie wasn't very tall, I had to spread my legs apart
and bend my knees to get low enough, but she was quite sexy, enjoying
the act along with me, rocking backwards to meet my thrusts, and
pushing hard against me when she felt my semen flow Somehow, I didn't
feel as dirty after having sex with her as I later did with most
women.

I think in a way I loved her, but I would never admit it to myself or
anyone else.  It was one thing to "outsmart the system" by getting my
rocks off without women, but emotional involvement would be "too weird"
and perverted.

One night I thought I had bought it, it was cold, and I was wearing my
special winter sex outfit: a pair of jeans with the zipper and fly cut
out no underwear, and a long, old topcoat all I had to do was unbutton
the lower part of the coat drape it forward around my partner's rump,
and I was ready for warm action.

That night I was inside the board-fenced pen where Leo kept the ponies
during the winter I was just finishing a good session with Little
Goldie (as opposed to "Big Goldie," a mean-tempered sorrel Leo also
owned) and must have made too much noise in the throes of orgasm,
because a dog started barking and Leo's porch light came on.  I tried
to hide amongst the horses, but the pen was too small and he spotted me
with his flashlight Remembering Dad's admonition about "getting caught"
I figured my life was over.  I'd go to prison in disgrace where the
other cons would treat me like scum, and pass me around for a sex
toy.

Dad would be  ill thrown out of the ministry, and he and Mom would
have to live on welfare, objects of scorn.

I had closed my coat by the time Leo got to the pen, but he still
asked, "What are you doing here, Jim?"  The flashlight's beam flicked
from me to Little Goldie, her tail in the air.  Semen glinted in the
light as it dribbled and oozed from her black-lipped pussy.  Leo
repeated the question.  His voice didn't sound angry, nor particularly
puzzled.  In my despair, I didn't even consider trying to lie about it
but I couldn't simply say it aloud.

"Uh, I think you know Leo switched off the light "Yeah, I figured it
out a long time ago, why you'd borrow a pony or two and keep them in
your yard OVERNIGHT And I'm always finding your billfold where you lose
it climbing through the fence.  You should leave it at home when you're
gonna come over here."

I was surprised.  "You're not mad?  I mean, you're not going to call
the cops?"

"The cops?  Hell, no, you're a teenager!  I was one once-walking around
with a hard-on twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four, wanting
pussy so bad I couldn't think of anything else!  I'd rather see you
with my pets than out attacking some old woman or little girl.  You
always treat them well, and you're a nice kid.  I ain't never tried out
an animal in my life, but I've thought about it once in a while, and
plenty of my friends when I was growing up screwed anything warm and it
never hurt them."

"Does this-does this mean it's okay with you if I keep on, uh, you
know?"

"Sure.  Just be more careful Leave your wallet at home, like I told
you.  Instead of sneaking over at night when people are gonna wonder
what you're up to, I'll tell my wife it's okay for you to visit the
ponies in the daytime while I'm at work, and you can take one into the
shed where no one can see you.  Or you can always take one home with
you for a day or two like you been doing."

Leo surprised me, all right He was the first adult outside of Dad who
found out about my desires and not only accepted but condoned them.

I had an affair with Little Goldie that lasted almost the whole four
years we lived in that town.  I was rather disappointed in later years
when I came back for a visit and saw that while Leo and family were
still there, his pen and all the animals were gone.  i didn't want to
ball Goldie again (well, I did, but couldn't have at that particular
time) so much as I just wanted to see her once more.  I didn't have the
heart to ask what had happened to her.  I was afraid of the answer.

The white one was just the right size, and the nostalgia elicited by
her resemblance to Little Goldie almost kept James from noticing the
blonde-maned sorrel filly in the same section of the corral.  He wished
he could go in and check them closer, but settled for leaving his
business card stuck in the trailer door with a note, "Please call me, I
want to buy a horse," scrawled on the back.

Back home, Grace and Tony were gone to church, and would be staying
late for a basket dinner.  James decided to work some more on the
endless job of shop-cleaning.

First, a couple of good jolts of speed to motivate him, and he set to
work.  As the boring routine of "sweep into a pile, vacuum up pile,
move more crap and expose more dirt, sweep into a pile .  . ." 
continued, the drugs loosened his tongue a bit and he again talked to
himself.

"So, how's it going?  Feeling better now?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"You're really thinking of buying a pony of your own-cy'" James
chuckled.  "Yeah.  Any objections?"

'Not as long as you know why you're doing it."

"I'm doing it because I'm sick and tired of playing a fake role.

I've spent all my life pretending to be a good little preacher's boy,
or a good little preacher, or a good little technician, or cab driver,
or narc, or good father, or a sober, responsible member of the
community!

Remember how good I am at faking people out?  Remember how I used to
get good and ripped on LSD then play that game of going into a police
station and rapping with the cops for an hour or so just to see if I
could maintain outward appearances while fireworks sizzled and popped
in my brain?  I'm thirty-six years old!  It's time to be myself for a
while!"

"Hey, no need to get hostile!  That's the answer I wanted to hear.

There's nothing worse than living an illusion so long that it becomes a
delusion and seems real.  You still have to maintain a public image,
but with those that count, especially yourself, you have a real need to
be what you actually are."

"It's easy to say, isn't it?  But I still wonder if I'm doing the right
thing.  Am I progressing or regressing?."

"Can you really regress from where you are right now?  Your left arm
bears the scars of literally thousands of needle punctures.  Two nights
ago you seriously contemplated deliberate suicide after risking death
with that silly stunt on the highway.  Your business is going downhill,
your wife and kids are gone, you hardly ever see anyone besides those
you do business with.  Just what has trying to live up to everyone
else's idea of 'ideal' done for you?"

'Ouch!  I get the point.  So, I'll look 'em over if the guy calls
back."

"Good.  Is that the phone ringing?.  Maybe it's him."

It was.

Frank Buntz told James that the white pony he was interested in and the
sorrel with her had already been sold to another party.  "But if you
really want one of them, come on over and maybe we can work something
out."

James wasted no time.  When he got to the corral, there was a
three-quarter-ton flatbed truck hooked up to a fifth-wheel stock
trailer parked in front, and a large, sixty-year-old man wearing
overalls dipping water from a rain barrel into the stock tank.

"Frank?"

"Yeah.  You James?"

"Uh-huh.  I was wanting to buy a pony."

"What'dja have in mind?"

"Well, I want a pet, mostly.  I'm separated, and my daughter's crazy
about horses, but I don't get to see her much now.  I guess I don't
care so much about it being saddle-broke, but I'd like one that's
gentle."

Buntz scratched at the stubble on his chin, then pointed.  "That paint
gelding over there's a nice one.  You can walk right up to him."

"Looks good, but I've been looking at those two little mares in that
separate pen over there.  What's the story?"

"Them are the ones that's already sold, but let's take a look,
anyway."

With that, Frank Buntz unlocked the chain on the gate and led the way
inside.  The two passed through another, smaller gate into a pen that
reached under an extension of the barn roof, providing shelter from the
weather.  The loading chute also extended into this area, explaining
why the two animals had been isolated there.

'I can let you have either one for fifty dollars."

'I kind of like the shaggy white one," said James, trying to walk up to
the suspicious pony.  She circled, keeping her distance.

The horse-trader took a couple of ropes from hooks and quickly caught
and tethered both animals.  James then proceeded to check each one out
at close range.  The toes of the white one's hooves poked out in front,
curling up at the ends, indicating that the mare had foundered at one
time, causing permanent injury to her feet, damage that could easily
get worse with time until she was crippled beyond walking and would
have to be destroyed.

The blonde sorrel's hooves looked quite healthy.  At request, the
trader provided a hoof-pick and James picked the mud and manure out of
the bottom of her left forehoof.  The sorrel shied when he first
approached, but stood still after reaching the end of her rope,
trembling a little as James held the hoof up to work on it.  When the
sole had been scraped clean, he looked carefully for any hint of a
brown ring in the edge of the white horn-like material.  He repeated
the operation on the other forehoof and one rear.  Her hooves seemed to
be in excellent shape.

'Any chance you've got vaccination records?"  James asked as he petted
and calmed both animals.

"Got ones from the auction sale.  Gimme a minute and I'll get 'em."

Frank left the corral.

This was the opportunity James was awaiting.  Gently, but with quick
economy of motion, he lifted the white mare's tail and gently rubbed
the exterior of her vulva.  She shifted nervously.  James spit on a
fingertip and slipped it inside.  The white mare whickered, stamped a
hind foot, and clamped her tail down hard, trying to cover her
genitals.

With a quick glance to insure that Frank was still inside, James
repeated the operation on the sorrel.  She shied some, too, but it
seemed to be more nervousness at being close to a human than anything
specific about her sex organs.

James was in a quandary.  Neither one seemed to give definite signs of
being trainable in the way he wished, nor definitely untrainable for
sex.  Probably, either one could learn with a little time.

James was leaning back against a fence when Frank returned with the
sale papers.

'Made up your mind?"

"well, I think I'd rather have the white one, but her feet don't look
too good."

"They ain't."

"Can you give me a better price on her?"

'No, not really.  People want them fuzzy or shaggy ones these days,
plus she's bigger than the sorrel.  She'd bring more at the meat
market."

James paled.  'Meat market?  You're kidding, right?"

"Nope.  That's why you don't see very many ponies around.  The killers
buys up most of 'em.  They sells the meat to the Japs."  James
shuddered at the thought.  He knew that business was business, and for
every bite of meat someone ate, some kind of animal had to die.

But horses ...

Suddenly he was very glad he hadn't asked what happened to Little
Goldie.

"Look, I'm a horse-trader.  I don't like it neither, but them's the
facts.  You seem to know something about horses, have you had many.9"
Yeah, but not the way you mean.

"Most of what I know is just what I've read."

"Okay.  The white one has bad feet, but she's kinda cute like one of
them little dogs with all the hair hangin'down in their eyes.  I
already got her sold for what I'm asking', and the guy don't care none
about her feet.  But if I was you, I'd take that little sorrel.  She
ain't broke or nuthin' but she's only two years old, and she'll train
right out an' make you'a good pet.  Her feet's fine, an' if you watch
what she eats, they'll stay good.  Most people has problems when they
let a little pony eat lots of fresh grass early in the spring when it's
too rich, or they give 'em a lot of grain."

"She's pretty."

"Yep, she'll be a good'n.  The man what bought these two says he's got
the white one sold, but there's no tellin' what's gonna happen to that
sorrel.  She's likely to either go to someone who'll ruin her feet by
not takin'care of her, or git fattened up for Tokyo dinner."

James was fascinated by the trader's quick zeroing-in on his tender
spot, admiring the man's obvious talent for salesmanship.  But, still,
he made some valid points.  Besides, if the other customer already had
the white one sold, it wouldn't be fair to him ...

"Okay, I'll take the sorrel.  Is it okay if I give you a check to close
the deal?  If you'll hold it until tomorrow afternoon, I'll bring you
cash in exchange."

"Huh.  I hold the horse until you do?"

"Sure.  I need to fix up a place for her, anyway I can't take delivery
for a few days.  Speaking of which, how much to deliver her?"

A faint gleam came into Buntzs eye.  "This your address on the card?"

A nod.  "Oh, I'll have to hook up the trailer an' all, an' take a while
... how's twenny dollars sound?"

It sounded a bit steep, but James had already committed himself to the
deal now, getting enthused, so he agreed.  The deal was closed and the
arrangements made.

On the way home, James detoured by a farm store that was open on
-Sunday afternoons and picked up a tether chain, a curry comb, and a
sack of feed.

May 1987 The next few days passed quickly, yet dragged interminably.

James made good on his promise regarding the check, and, at a time when
he wanted to expend all his efforts preparing for the new family
member, his business hit a hot spurt.

His first inclination was to postpone service calls, but he found
himself fighting a renewed sense of responsibility.  He no longer could
figure on just taking off on his own if things didn't work out.  He had
to make a living not only for himself, but his pony, and he needed a
fixed base of operations to do that.  He spent less time on the
computer and went to bed early to take advantage of the daylight.

"POLKA PONY: Rob, will you tell MR.  MASTER and the rest that I've
gotta leave Q-Link?"

"ROB 47: Sure.  What's up?"

POLKA PONY: Oh, well, I'm getting busy, and this takes too much time,
and costs too much, even at six cents a minute."

"MR.  MASTER: What's this?  Hey, come back and visit some day, PP.

It's been fun."

He never would.

About Tuesday, it occurred to James that he'd better check city law.

He'd seen horses around town, but most of them were on considerably
larger lots than he owned.  A quick phone call told him it was all
right as long as he had just one horse.

He drew up a basic design for a simple four-by-eight-foot shed that
would shelter the sorrel during storms, and serve as a boudoir if
everything else went according to plan.  He started collecting
materials and marking out his proposed pen.

Tom Sheisskopf and family watched the backyard work with interest, but
Linda kept them from asking questions, focusing her beady eyes on James
as he measured and drove stakes into the ground.  Mrs. Windward on the
other side asked James if he was planning "another ugly radio tower,"
and worrying that it would affect her property's value.

"all within city codes," James reassured her.  Reverend Tony, of
course, had a good idea of what James was up to, and gladly offered his
knowledge and advice.

While the building project was barely started, James bought a large,
heavy plastic water pan, a halter, and the other bare necessities to
move the pony in.  He figured he could tether her to the trees growing
in his back yard or stake her out in open areas and, between the
grazing and a few oats, she'd be fine while he built.

Frank Buntz promised delivery Thursday afternoon when James called him
that morning.

"Dad, what do you think Mom's gonna say?."  Jim asked when they were
alone at lunchtime.

"I don't know.  Not much, I suppose.  You're a grown man, this is your
place; what can she say.?"

'Aw, hell, she'll know what's going on ... remember when she found
those pictures Mike took of me and Goldie one night?"

Tony grinned.  "I remember.  Boy, was there hell to pay over that.

Bad enough she suspected what your inclinations were, but that one of
you eating horse pussy freaked her out!  Especially since the camera
angle made it look like the horse was smiling."

"How do you know she wasn't?"

Father and son chuckled, looked at each other, then burst into loud
laughter, James weakening from emotional paralysis and lowering his
head to the table, Tony breaking into a cough.  As they began to calm
down, James tilted his head, grinned, and looked at Tony.

'Ponylingus."

That set them off again, laughing and coughing, shaking the table for a
moment.  James was enjoying this, as was Tony, being reminiscent of the
times they would get into punning contests late at night over soft
drinks and cigarettes before Tony's bronchitis forced him to give up
smoking.  Such closeness had been all too rare lately.

As his strength returned, James lifted his head.  Tony peered through
his thick cataract glasses, looked him square in the eye and asked, "If
it was the other way around, would that be fillyatio?"

Too much!  Shrieking in mental pain, roaring with laughter, the
cataplexy struck full force as James threw back his head and slid down
out of the chair to the floor to lie there gasping for breath, laughing
with each exhalation, tears flowing freely from his eyes.

Tony looked concerned and started to rise, but James waved him feebly
away, choking out, "I'll be-okay-it's just-so funny!  I-haven't
laughed-haven't dared-laugh like this-for years.  Oh, gawd, Dad, you're
wonderful!  Life's wonderful!"

Tony looked serious again.  "Funny thing to say-sort of like you
weren't too sure, lately."

James sobered again, and raised up on his elbows.  "I wasn't.  I was
real unsure last week."

Reverend Tony asked, "Sure now.?"

"Yes.  It's like we talked about Saturday; I sorted a lot of things
out, - and your advice about being myself, and worrying about what I
need instead of what everyone else thinks or says I need, and most of
all just taking things as they are instead of what I wish they might
be-that helped a lot."

He got to his feet and walked around the table to hug his father.

"I love you, Dad.  I love Mom, too.  I really hope she doesn't take it
too hard."

"I wouldn't worry much about that.  We've both been happy, seeing you
come out of your pain these last few days.  I think she'll be more
accepting than you give her credit for.  Hell, she's put up with me for
forty-seven years."

The skies clouded up that afternoon, threatening rain.  James sat
anxiously in his shop, nervously awaiting the arrival of his pet and
hopefully-his lover.  One necessary item had been left off his shopping
list, but he dug around in cardboard boxes until he found the lead rope
with the snap-eye on the end he had bought many years ago to use when
he surreptitiously visited other peoples' pens.

He tried to work, but was too nervous.  He read back issues of Reader
Digest, smoked, and shot dope.

Finally, about four o'clock, he heard the squeal of brakes out front.

James grabbed the rope and halter and burst out the front door of his
shop.  there was Frank Buntz waddling his corpulent bulk around to the
rear of the big stock trailer, the little sorrel looking lost in the
seemingly vast confines.

'Gimme yer headstall and rope."  Frank -opened the tailgate and went
in.  Wrapping the rope around the filly's neck, Frank removed his
halter, put the new blue nylon one on her head, clipped the line to it,
and led the frightened pony out the rear.  James paid him the
agreed-upon haulage, and took the rope.

"She was raised on pasture all her life, an'ain't been around people
much.  You be careful an' treat her good!"  Frank reentered his truck
and drove off.

James led her to the front porch where his parents were standing, Tony
watching with interest, Grace with a puzzled look slowly turning to
dawning comprehension on her face.

'Folks, meet-hmmm, you need a name.  A good name."  James contemplated
her as she looked back at him with tense eyes, whites showing around
the dark brown and black of iris and pupil.  "Your coat is'almost light
enough to be red, and your mane and tail are golden, 120 like fight
honey poured onto dark.  Your name is 'Wildhoney Cherry."  Turning
again to his parents he made formal the introduction: "This is
Wildhoney Cherry.  I'll call her Cherry."

Wisely, his parents made no move toward the nervous Cherry, but they
repeated the new name, greeting her, then James led her around the
house to the back.

Besides a few trees and a garden patch, Jim's back yard was home to his
ham radio tower.  It stuck forty-five feet into the air and was guyed
to three poles set around it, one of which held a winch used to raise
and lower it on its hinged base.  The tower, and, more importantly, the
odd-looking "home-brewed" antenna on top, had sometimes been a bone of
contention in the neighborhood.  The Sheisskopfs claimed his radio
transmitter interfered with their television, although no other
neighbors had trouble.  Mrs. Windward claimed it was ugly, reducing
the value of her house.  It was visible for half a mile in any
direction, which gave James the idea of making and mounting a five-foot
lighted star on it for Yule, and stringing colored lights up the tower
and guywires.  Mrs. Windward griped about that, too, and Tom
Sheisskopf felt compelled to attempt to outdo James's lights every
year.

However, nobody ever complained when the thunderstorms came and he was
"netted in" with the rest of the tornado spotters on theing to
descriptions of the storms'progress, tracking them from Coffeeville,
Kansas, and Tulsa Oklahoma, all the way over to Springfield,
Missouri.

The neighborhood took comfort in knowing when to worry and when to seek
shelter.

It was to the piece of four-inch well-casing that held the winch that
James now tethered Cherry, planning to get the chain and snaphooks so
she could eat some grass and settle in a bit.

Cherry had other plans.  As soon as James tied the rope and approached
her, meaning to pat her a moment and soothe her, she gave a mighty
backward tug and pulled the loop right out of the end of the rope,
freeing the snap-hook.  She took off into the large field behind
James's lot.

As soon as she gained a little distance, the temptation of the grass
overtook her, and she stopped to sample some.  James had started to
follow, but when she stopped, he ran back to the house and grabbed his
new chain, then went two doors south for some help.

In a few minutes, Cherry's head snapped up as she spied James, five
neighborhood kids, and Tom Sheisskopf making an encircling movement
toward her.  She started warning away, keeping a close eye on the
widespread group.  As they closed in, she picked up her feet and
trotted around them, stopping again to graze when she felt sufficient
distance had been gained.  Two more attempts resulted in the same
thing.

Some of the kids had a hard time keeping up because they were laughing
too hard.

Even through his annoyance and frustration, James was pleased with the
way Cherry carried her head, the graceful motion of her feet, and the
beauty of mane and tail flowing in the wind.  He called the others
together for a huddle.

"Look, we're too close together.  We need to spread out, almost all the
way across the field, and head her for that corner over there where the
fences form an acute angle.  Then we can slowly come together as we
close in.  Okay?"

The plan was put into motion, Cherry keeping her distance, not seeming
to notice that she was losing running room.  Soon, the group was
standing only a few feet from each other, and a few feet from the
pony.

They were tired, and she was tired,-but Cherry had enough wind left for
one final attempt.

She headed right for a small gap between people, digging in her hooves
and sending clods flying behind her.  Fortunately, James was one of the
people by the gap.  More fortunately, he was highly motivated.

Most fortunately, he managed to snag a secure grip on her halter as she
lunged for freedom.

Then he discovered that even a little 300-pound pony had a lot of
pulling power as he found himself spun around and dragged.  At the same
time, Cherry discovered that a 350-pound man made a pretty good
anchor.

The horse's momentum carried them about ten feet in a circular path
before their motion was halted.

James lost his footing and fell down.  His weight dragged Cherry's head
with him, she slipped in the wet grass, and fell down beside him.

James -quickly threw an arm over her neck and a leg over her barrel to
hold her as he snapped the chain onto the halter.

The rest of the group looked at the two on the ground, then at each
other.  The wiseguy of the crowd, fifteen-year-old Kurt, asked, 'How do
you yell 'rape' in horse-talk?"

Everyone, including James, cracked up at this.  Cherry, the fight and
wind knocked out of her by her fall, just rolled an eye at all of them,
obviously wondering what kind of maniacs she had fallen in with.

James quieted down quickly, and started stroking Cherry's neck,
reassuring her that it was okay, that no one would hurt her.  He
thanked his helpers and stood up.  Cherry got quickly to her feet and
stood stiff-legged as James gently prodded all four legs and her rib
cage, making sure that the fall hadn't injured her.  Then he led her
back to the solid post and attached the chain, leaving her to graze as
he went to the back stoop and sat watching her a while.

She's really pretty.  No, she's beautiful!  The way her muscles ripple
under her skin as she moves, those trim legs and ankles.  She's built
more like a small thoroughbred horse than some chunky pony.

James went into the back door of his shop and opened the bag of feed.

He took a handful and went to Cherry.  She evaded him again, circling
the pole.  Quickly tiring of the game of "Ring Around with Cherry," he
simply put his feet on the chain and walked up to her.

Stopping within arm's reach of her nose,'James held out his hand.

Cherry shied, but then caught a whiff.  Her neck stretched as she
reached out her nose and sniffed more closely.  Reaching as far as
possible, approaching only as close as absolutely necessary, her soft
lips wiggled into the pelletized food.  She got a nibble, chewed, then
reached for more.

"Aha!  Better-tasting stuff than you've had in your life, I'll bet!"

James pulled his hand back a bit.  Cherry couldn't quite reach his
hand, now, so she took a small, tentative step closer and was rewarded
with another bite.  The two repeated this a few times until the food
was gone and Cherry stood within reach of James's belt buckle.

. He quickly reached out and grasped her halter again, causing her to
shy backwards, but he held a firm grip and stroked her muzzle with his
free hand.  She relaxed and accepted the attention, merely quivering a
bit as he moved closer to one side of her head and scratched her
withers.  This was something Cherry could relate to, having shared many
a mutual-itch session with other horses.  As James continued to
scratch, she got into it, swaying back and forth to move the
pleasurable sensation around to the right spot of the moment.

After a couple of minutes James let loose of the halter and Cherry
continued to enjoy the massage for a bit until she noticed that her
head was again free, whereupon she removed herself to the length of the
chain, snorting loudly, whether at herself or James it was not clear.

She stared at James as he stood where he was, then lowered her head to
the grass again, keeping a wary eye on the odd-looking horse who had
been so nice after earlier scaring her half to death.  She moved,
browsing through the grass, and didn't seem to notice that she had put
slack in her chain and was, in fact, moving closer to the man.

James smiled, went back to the shop where he picked up the curry comb,
and reapproached the pony.

Again she was reluctant to let him get near, requiring the "step on the
chain" gambit, but her eyes were a bit calmer than before, and she
rapidly took to the pleasant sensation of the metal comb as it dragged
loose hairs out of her shedding coat.  By the time James had thoroughly
covered her body, flipping the comb backwards to use the coarse teeth
on her mane and tail, he was able to drop the chain and she stood
grazing, tolerating his close presence as he stroked her neck with his
hand.  However, when her browsing caused her to move and he attempted
to follow, she picked up her heels again.  He went back to the porch to
watch her for a while.

He talked to her from his perch on the back steps, and her ears
twitched his direction with each sound.

"Hey, there, Cherry girl, we're gonna be friends.  Yeah, just you and
me.  You're pretty, you are.  You have great legs."

There was a tapping from the glass patio doors behind him, and he
turned to see his father standing there, looking out.  Tony slid the
door open an inch or so and asked, "Is it okay if I come out?  I don't
want to spook her again."

"Come on out.  I think it'll be okay."

Tony carefully placed his cane and eased himself down beside James.

"Where's Mom?"

"She's out taking her evening walk with Mrs.  Windward."

"What did she say'" Tony pursed his mouth.  "Well, she wasn't thrilled
with the idea at first, but she agreed you have long needed something
we couldn't give you, and that you've really gotten a better attitude
in the last few days.  She'll come around."

"She knows, right?"

"As much as she's willing to let herself know.  Your mother sometimes
tries to hide from unpleasant thoughts or situations, like most people
do."

"That's okay, I guess.  I hate to push it in her face, but I won't
pretend the situation is other than it really is just for Mom.  that's
the kind of thing that's gotten me here in the first place."

"Yeah.  well, when are you going to buildd your barn?"

'I figure I'll start in a little while.  I want Cherry to get used to
seeing me around before I make any loud noises.  I'll do my cutting out
front in the driveway so the power saw Won't scare her.  She's still
pretty wild."

Tony chuckled.  "Yes, we saw that!  I haven't seen you run in years!"

"Uh, right ... well, I guess I'll get her water pan and set it out at
the limit of her chain so she's not so likely to knock it over or step
in it."

After watching James do so, Tony went back inside to sit down.

Concrete was hard on his age-brittled backside.  James went into the
shop, where he collected his drawings and took them out front.

Earlier he had backed his pickup into the driveway, and the lowered
tailgate made a convenient workbench.  Soon he was measuring (twice, to
be sure) and cutting with a will.

When he had six pressure-treated posts cut and marked for position, and
several two-by-fours cut to length, he put them, a hammer, a large
carpenter's square, and some nails in an old wheelbarrow and toted them
around back.

Cherry shied again at the noisy load, but only backed a few feet as
James made a wide circle around her area, then stopped near the back
edge of his lot.

Within half an hour he had assembled the back and front basic framing
on the ground, and was ready to erect them.  He returned to the front
yard, where he loaded up six concrete building blocks that he rolled
around to the building site.  This time Cherry's head came up warily,
but she didn't move as James went by.

James placed the blocks on the ground and stretched a string between
them, g them up straight, then he hung a spirit-level on the string and
noted how much ground he would have to dig out of the corners to level
them.  Soon they were placed to his satisfaction.

Grasping the top of the front wall, which consisted of two posts spaced
four feet apart with two-by-fours, he lifted it up by the crossframing
and planted the protruding bottoms in the hollow cavities of two
east-side blocks, where the framework balanced upright in the calm
air.

Quickly, he repeated the process with the back wall.  It was a bit
harder, being twice the width with three posts instead of two, but it
went in just as smoothly.  James grabbed a five-foot scrap of wood, his
hammer, and a mouthful of nails and quickly tacked it across between
the north ends of the two sections to keep them upright.

Then he took his precut lumber and square and finished off the north
side.  He set the remaining post in the southeast block and nailed on
cross-pieces to make the south wall.

The light was growing dim by this time,-but James looked on his
creation with satisfaction.  He had, in the course of two hours' work,
made a very good start on Cherry's shed.  The blank back wall faced his
house, and the other long wall with the open doorway faced away, so
that no one could see inside without walking into the large field
behind his lot, where they would be plainly visible.  James picked up
his tools and went inside.

The elder Falabellas invited James to join them for supper.

"Nice job out there, son."

-Thanks, Dad."

"Are you going to sheath it in plywood or clapboard?"

"I've found a place with exterior-grade.flakeboard on sale.  I'll use
that and cover it with rolled asphalt roofing."

"Well, I've lived in plenty of houses with that for siding.  It should
be fine."

"That's what I thought.  Your parents always stayed warm and dry in
their house.  Heck, half the houses in that little town were built that
way.  It isn't too pretty, but it works."

Grace Falabella had been silent through half the meal, but then she
spoke.  "I walked with Mrs. Windward this evening, and she wanted to
know what you were doing with a pony."

James looked curiously at her.  "What did you say.?"

"I told her you bought it for a pet.  She was pretty upset.  She says
it will smell and draw flies, and ruin her property value.  She asked
me to tell you she doesn't want it around."

Tony frowned and James's face clouded as he said, "Why, that ungrateful
old bag!  doesn't she have the guts to tell me herself?."

"Now, she's a nice lady and goes to church all the time-" "She's a
snob!  Her husband was a regular guy, nice enough, but he was a janitor
all his life!  She sells Avon door-to-door, but likes to pretend she's
God's gift to social propriety.  Doggone it, where does she get off
griping about my new pony, or all the bitching she's done about my
perfectly legal antenna systems?"

Tony jumped in.  "Hey, take it easy!  She's entitled to her opinion!"

James calmed down a bit, but continued, "Yeah, and she's welcome to
it.

When her husband was charged with child molestation, Sheila wanted me
to run right over and shoot him or something because he used to talk to
our kids.  I told her that it was up to the legal system to determine
his guilt.  I offered to appear as a character witness in his behalf,
because I knew the girl and the family, and they're nothing but
troublemakers, and now even Sheila thinks it was a put-up job, since we
found out what liars the Sheisskopfs are.  When he went to prison
anyway, I shoveled snow from Mrs. Windward's driveway so she could go
sell perfume.  I helped her prune her trees.  I mowed her lawn for her
several times.  Gratitude.  Phooey!"

"James .  . ."

'Oh, don't worry, Mom.  I'll still be nice, polite, and civil.

But Cherry stays, whether Mrs.  Windward likes it or not."

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence.

Afterwards, James went back out into the night.  Cherry's head turned
as he approached with another handful of feed.  She backed up a couple
of steps, but stopped when she saw the outstretched hand, extended her
nose, and took a bite.  James didn't have to step on the chain or hold
her head as he slowly closed in.  He stroked her neck and scratched her
mane at the shoulder as she ate the rest, then she stood still for more
rubbing.

James then put his arms around her neck and stooped to hug her.

Cherry accepted this a little nervously, shifting her hooves back and
forth, but he was satisfied with the progress of their relationship,
and went to bed.  No drugs tonight, he was tired.  A good tired.

 CHAPTER NINE May 1987 James awakened and dressed early the next
morning.  When he opened the door at the foot of his couch/bed, the
rising sun shone through the window in the laundry/ utility room that
the door led into.  He looked to his right, into the kitchen, then
quickly turned his head back.  'Sorry, I didn't know you were in
here."

His mother put down her insulin bottle and syringe, and calmly slid her
slacks back up.  'No problem, son.  Haven't you been to bed yet?"

"Yeah, I just got up."  He walked into the kitchen to the table and
looked out the patio doors.  The yard was wet with dew, sparkling like
glitter in the sunshine.  He slid the door open and inhaled the fresh
air.

He looked over at Cherry just as her head came up.  She whinnied a
greeting at him, seeming friendly enough.  "Hi, girl," he responded,
sliding the door shut again, turning to the bathroom to take care of
morning business.

His mother was fixing breakfast when he came out.

"Do you want to join us?  It won't be any trouble to throw in a little
more oatmeal."

James shuddered.  The thought of breakfast still repelled him.

"Uh, no thanks.  I'm gonna get an early start on a couple of
projects.

Then I still need to fix Mrs. Wharton's antenna.  She's been gone
whenever I had the time to get there, and I know she enjoys her soap
operas as much as you do."

James went back to his room to look up her number, called her, then
went and did the job.  It went quickly, and James drove down to the
local lumberyard for the flakeboard siding and some more
pressuretreated posts.  As soon as he had the sides on the shelter, he
needed to lay out and start the pen so Cherry wouldn't have to wear a
chain and halter all the time.

On his return, he walked right up to Cherry, and didn't even have to
hold the chain or carry a bribe.  A few moments invested in
shoulder-rubbing and checking her water, and he was back at work.

A couple of hours saw the siding nailed on and cut for the roofpeak.

Then he planned his fence, digging holes for the wooden posts that
would form the corners.  The straight stretches would be done with
steel posts driven into the soil.

Just as he finished the last hole his mother called to him from the
patio.

"Yes, Mom?"  he said, brushing the dirt from his hands.

"Are you building fence, now?"  'Getting a good start on it.  What did
you want?"

"Well, I may have some bad news.  You'd better come in and clean up for
supper while I tell you about it."

Mystified, James washed up and sat down.

"I went walking with Mrs. Windward again this afternoon.  She said to
ten you-" Angrily, James interrupted, "Can't that woman talk to me
herself.?

Why does she think I have to get my messages relayed through you?

She seems to think I'm still a little boy, the way she plays my
mother'!"

Mrs. Falabella looked hurt.  "I'm sorry, Mom.  I shouldn't yell at
you.  I'm just irritated at her, sitting in all her snobbish glory and
handing down her Pronouncements from on High.  Go on.  Please."

"Well, she's been calling the mayor and the police and complaining
about your new pony.  She said she found some city ordinances that'll
keep you from having one here."

"Hey, I checked it out before I bought Cherry!  What's she talking
about?"

"I'm not sure.  Something about fences.  Maybe you'd best call City
Hall again before you get too deep into it."

James brooded through supper, attention commanded by dark thoughts
about people who weren't content to live their own lives and insisted
on controlling those around them.  After washing his dishes, he went
out into the shop to build the gate.

It was nothing fancy, just a four-bar wooden gate with cross-braces
made from one-by-fours nailed securely together.  When finished, he sat
down at his desk and worked a crossword puzzle while watching a little
television on the computer monitor.  Composite color monitors make
great TVs when fed the video signal from a VCR.

Once, he reached for the shaving kit.  He still hadn't used up the
supply of dissolved tablets he had prepared a week before, the morning
of the awful night in the motel.  He put it back.

I don't need any of that right now I'm already twitchy enough about Old
Bag Windward.  Besides, I want to get to bed early and be at City Hall
first thing when they open.

The next morning found James parked in front of the civic building.

He had already given Cherry more water after moving her to a new
.grazing area, plus another handful of feed.

This getting up with the sun is already becoming a habit for me.

I wonder ... no, I don't suppose farmers do it because of anything
between them and their livestock-at leas not most of them.

When he saw the silver-haired yet attractively young city clerk fishing
in her purse for the door keys, he got out and followed her into the
building.

"You're here bright and early!  What can I do for you, Mr.
Falabella?"

"I just bought a pony to keep on my place, and understand my neighbor
has been complaining.  When I called the other day, you or someone in
this office said there would be no problem, but she claims she found
something down here that would keep me from having one."

"Oh, I remember.  Let me look it up for you."  She went to the old
bound ordinance book, and flipped through the pages.

'Here it is ... Section 167.4 says that you can't keep goats, pigs, or,
chickens in the city limits ... no cattle except dairy animals for your
family use ... horses-yes, here!'Any horse pen, fence, or enclosure
shall not be located less than one hundred feet from the closest part
of another's dwelling or place of business.  If more than one horse is
to be kept, there shall be a minimum enclosure of at least one-third
acre per animal."

"that's what she called about.  She tried to say her whole lot was her
'place of business' since she sells Avon.  I told her that if she
wanted to claim it as a business place, she'd have to get a license and
a zoning variance since you're in a new addition."

James nodded.  "How much ground is required for one horse?"

"There is no minimum for one animal, just if you have two or more."

"Is the minimum distance measured from her property, or from her
house?"

"The house.  I know, because we went through this with another person,
and that's the way the city attorney and the judge interpreted it."

"Okay, thanks a lot!"

"You're welcome.  While you're here, what about that water bill from
last month?"

James winced.  "Uh, I'll see you in a couple of days, okay'.?"

"Well, all right.  Just don't let it go too long.  Reconnect charges
are up to $6.00 now."

With a wave of thanks, James left.

Back home again, he spooled out and measured a hundred feet of coaxial
antenna cable, then eted his mother's help after checking to see that
Mrs.  Windward's car was gone.

"Here, Mom, you hold one end of the cable against the corner of her
house while I walk the other end around.  Hold tight, because I'm going
to pull against it."

As he moved in a shallow arc, James was relieved to find that the back
wall of the shelter just cleared the required distance.  He marked the
path of the cable end with stones he had removed from the postholes as
he dug them, then surveyed the results.

Drat!  The pen was going to look damned funny.  Instead of a nice, neat
rectangle, the sides running north and south from the stable on the
west side were going to have to angle back to the east.  He'd wind up
with a skewed pentagon.  Oh, well, pentangles are significant in the
Craft, so maybe this is a good omen of sorts.

"Are you done?"

"Huh?  Oh yeah, thanks, Mom!"

James redug his postholes and set the pressure-treated landscape
timbers in them, filling in with bagged concrete premix, tamping the
dry mixture firmly and then wetting it and the ground around it.

'I have to go into Joplin for some steel T-posts and fence wire.

Want to ride along.  "James asked his mother.

Grace Falabella was a little surprised.  Usually, James preferred the
company of his father.

'About how long will it take?  I need to make a cake for the bake sale
after church tomorrow."

"Maybe an hour.  The Payless Cashways lumberyard has a sale on them,
but they're pretty fast on service.  Wanna come?"

"Okay, I guess so."

When they were on the highway, headed into town, Grace said, "I wanted
to talk to you, anyway."

James grinned.  "I rather expected you did."

"Well, it's about your pony-" "Your questions, or is this more from
next door?"

"No, it's me.  Daddy said you'd talked to him about it, and he says
it's something you have to do."

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, I want what's best for you, you know.  If that's what it takes
to make you happy, I suppose I can live with it.  But-can't you, uh,"
she blushed, "well, you know-play with yourself'or something?."

James glanced at her, then put his eyes back on the road.

"Mom, I do.  At least once a day."

"Then why ... ?"

"It's lonely.  I want a partner, but I'm scared of disease, and I'm not
at all ready for another emotional relationship.  Frankly, I'm afraid
of being hurt again, and afraid of hurting someone else.  I am what I
am, not what you wish I was.  Not what I wish I was."

"That's kind of sad."

'Yes, I suppose so-but I'm going to make the best of a bad situation.

tan you live with that?"

After reflecting a moment, she replied, "Yes.  But be careful, okay?

Please?"

"I will.  No more pictures, for sure!"

Grace choked a bit, then laughed.  "Thanks!  Those ones I found ... oh,
my!"  They chuckled together.

It took about a week of wire-pulling, nail-driving, post-bracing labor
before the pen was ready for occupancy.  Meantime, Cherry lowered the
lawn's level, leaving clumps of grass that she didn't like as well.

The little filly showed a marked preference for the large patch of
Zoysia grass James had started on the north side of the back yard a few
years before.

Days before the pen was done, Cherry obviously decided James was her
friend.  Whenever he was in reach of her tether, she liked to come over
to be scratched and nuzzle him in return.

The third night after she moved to his house, James decided it was time
to try her.

About midnight, after the moon was down and the little city slept, he
went out back wearing only a pair of jogging shorts and rubber thongs,
carrying a small jar of petroleum jelly.  He scooped up some pelleted
feed in a bowl, but put it down out of reach.  It would be her reward
if all went well.

Cherry seemed curious as he tightened her tether to want her freedom of
motion, but wasn't alarmed as he scratched her favorite "itchy" at the
base of her mane.  As he had done several times before when he was
certain of being unobserved, he ran his hands over her back and down
her rump, then shoved his right hand under her tail.

Cherry first clamped her tail down in instinctive response, but rubbing
the base of her vulva stimulated her clitoris, which quickly hardened
into erection.  Her tail eased and lifted, and he gently inserted a
fingertip, which caused her tail to come up even further.

Stroking her neck with his other hand and saying, "Easy, little girl,"
in a gentle, quiet voice, he soon had Cherry rocking back and forth in
time with the penetrating digit, her muscles clamping and releasing his
finger.  The mental image of that pressure on his member gave James an
urgent erection.

It was time to find out ...

James slipped off his sandals and stepped out of his shorts.

Standing naked, he opened the jar and lubricated himself.  Cherry was,
of course, a virgin, and she fit quite snugly around his finger.  He
didn't want her first intercourse to be the least bit painful.

With the same greasy hand, he rubbed some on the lips of her vulva,
then stroked her back and hips and continued his soothing vocalizations
as he stepped behind her.

This was the moment of truth.  Would she accept him as a lover, or kick
his nuts halfway to the moon?  He lifted her tail to one side, grasped
his penis with the fingers of his right hand, using that thumb to
spread her lips open.

She turned her head to watch, but showed no sign of hostility as he
slipped just the tip into the opening primed apart by his thumb.

James was breathing hard, his whispered endearments coming in ragged
gasps.

"Okay, honey, I'm going to put this in, now.  Easy, easy ... it won't
hurt.  Oh, God, you're so hot, so warm!  Now, just let me slide it up
and down, that's right, you like it when it touches your clit, don't
you?

Oh, Cherry, oh, I've got to put it in further!  Oh, yes!  Oh, God,
you're tight!  So tight, so slick, so warm, and OH!"

As he penetrated to his full length, the head of his penis barely slid
through the muscular ring mares have -inside the vagina to keep urine
out of their uteris, and Cherry gave a full-strength "twitch!" 
accompanied by a low whicker.

Still, she showed no sign of objection, and every indication that she
was enjoying it as much as James.

Once he had full penetration, James stood still for a moment, legs
spread and knees slightly bent to bring himself low enough for the
coupling, savoring the sensations of coitus.  Cherry held herself
still, pussy contracting slightly at irregular intervals.  Then James
began to stroke, ever so slowly.  The friction of vaginal walls
rippling along his shaft combined with the ring sliding on and off the
head of his penis was exquisite.  Added to this was Cherry's motion;
she swayed back and forth in opposite-phase concert with him, obviously
enjoying the copulation, and her muscles added that equine magic:
clamping down on the head of his dick at the end of the out-stroke, and
on the base at the full penetration, bringing the tip of her clitoris
into contact with James each time.

It didn't take long, a few minutes at most, before he felt his orgasm
approaching.  He sped up just a little, not too much since he had
always found slow strokes to be more stimulating than fast.  Cherry
kept pace, sensing his approaching ejaculation.

When it came, James pressed himself hard against her, rubbing her
flanks in a rapid circular motion with his hands.  Cherry pressed back
hard against him, instinct making her want the semen deposited as far
up inside as possible.  She whinnied, cunt rapidly clenching again and
again, milking James dry as he spurted.

He pulled out after a minute, testicles aching from the pressure of
their contact and the intensity of his orgasm.  Cherry stood with tail
lifted high, her vulva still puckering as commingled vaginal secretions
and semen oozed out, a milky dribble.

She shook her head as James walked forward, then nosed at his exposed
penis.  He stood still, apprehensive that she might decide to nibble on
it-those teeth were pretty big, even in a little pony-but she just
smelled of it, then gave it a short lick with her tongue.

James hugged her, then scratched the "itchy" again before he put on his
shorts, loosed her tether back to regular length, then brought the feed
over.  Cherry eagerly attacked it as James contemplatively rubbed her
coat.  "Oh, my little filly!  You are something else indeed!

I think we're going to have a good relationship."

The consummation of their affair wasn't even marred when James noticed
the curtain of his parents' bedroom window fag shut.  I suppose Dad
heard me open the door.  Wonder if he watched the whole thing?

Oh, well, the old fart doesn't get much of a thrill anymore since
diabetes flattened his packer.  Hell, I hope he enjoyed it,  CHAPTER
TEN May 1987 Again, James awakened with the sunrise.

This is getting to be a habit Hope it doesn't ruin my reputation.

Regardless, he felt good; no headache, well rested, even his morning
mouth didn't taste like a neglected catbox as it usually did.

Nothing was on tap for this morning, and his parents weren't even up
yet, so after the usual awakening chores were taken care of, James
opened the refrigerator.

What have we here?  Sausage, eggs, frozen hash-browns, cheese ...

I think I'll surprise the folks and cook up a good breakfast hash.

Probably not on their diets, but this is a special morning!

Suiting action to thought, James soon had sausage gently sizzling on
the stove.

Knowing there would be a few minutes before the food required further
attention, he headed back to his room and opened the drug drawer on his
desk.  He stared for a minute at the pill bottles, grinding equipment,
little bags of ten syringes each, alcohol swabs, cotton, and all the
rest of the things that had dominated his life for most of a year.

Then, somewhat to his surprise, he closed the drawer again.

Maybe later.  Maybe never.  Shit this is weird!  All the time I was
using I hated it didn't want to do it But something inside drove me to
it anyway.  I wouldn't stop until I was out of drugs, and couldn't
forge a prescription, or get another one from the doctor yet As soon as
I got more, I'd resolve to just use them the way they were prescribed,
talking to myself about how they would last longer that way, and swear
that I'd stick to it this time; but before I even got home with the
bottles, I'd stop at another pharmacy and buy some more rigs if I
didn't have any left over from the last run-which I usually didn't
because I'd destroy them all as soon as the drugs were gone, making
more phony resolutions.

But here I am, I have over three hundred tabs of Dex lek lotsa nice,
sharp, clean syringes, no work to do today, and I don't want to shoot
up!  Huh ...

Actually, James knew he had work to do for himself, for Cherry.

The fence wasn't done, yet, the lawn needed mowing, and there was still
a hay shelter to complete along with getting the asphalt roofing roll
nailed onto the top and sides of the stable.  But first, breakfast
needed tending to.

Back in the kitchen, James saw the sausage was browned, and had cooked
out enough grease to fry the potatoes, so he broke the sausage into
little clumps with a spatula and poured in the frozen spuds.

As they sizzled out their ice and water, Tony came down the hall.

'What's cooking?  Smells good!"  He peered through his thick lenses.

"What're you doing up so early again?"

"I just felt like it.  I feel good this morning, and thought I'd make a
nice breakfast."

'Is there enough for all of us?"

"Yep.  I had some of that home-ground sausage from the meat market
downtown, the good stuff Ron makes, and I decided to fix up something
nice.  I know you and Mom can't eat this sort of stuff very often, but
this is kind of a special occasion, as I'm sure you saw last night."

Tony at least had the grace to blush ever so slightly as he grinned.

"Uh, yeah.  I did see.  Damn, you two looked like you were having one
hell of a good time!"

"Mom know?"

"No, she was asleep, and I sure as hell didn't tell her!  She knows,
but it embarrasses her something fierce.  She prefers to ignore that
reality, and I let her."

"Yeah, well, I guess I will too, except when she asks me outright.

She's nice and sweet and I don't see any point in making her
uncomfortable unnecessarily."

"Right.  Paper here yet?"

"I'll see."  Leaving the stove, James went out the front door and
picked up the daily.  He tossed it to Tony, who was sitting in his
usual place as his coffee brewed.  For himself, he selected one of the
horse care books he had checked out of the library and looked up the
section on foot care and shoeing.  Years back, he had seen a pony with
hooves that stuck way out in front, much worse than the pinto mare he
first had sex with, curving up in front like an Arabian slipper.

Someone told him that was "founder," too, and came from a horse eating
the wrong thing, or too much of the right thing, and sometimes it
crippled them so badly they had to be put down, killed.

No way did he want that to happen to Cherry!  She had been so good the
night before that he looked forward to a long life with her.

Even if she was just a convenient, warm hole to stick his prick into,
she showed signs of being a nice little horse, and she was some of the
best sex James had had in many years.  While he knew something about
horse health and hoof care, he wanted to learn as much as possible.

Father and son were seated, reading their respective literature, when
Grace came into the room and got her syringes and insulin out.

She, too, looked at James in surprise.

"Didn't you go to bed last night?"

"Slept like a baby.  I just woke up early again.  Want some hash for
breakfast?"

"Well, we shouldn't eat that kind of thing anymore."  She looked
wistfully at the skillet where the potatoes were turning a golden
brown.

The newspaper rustled.  "Dammit, honey, can't we eat a little something
good once in a while?  I get so damned tired of oatmeal!"

"Well, ... I suppose it Won't hurt, just this once.  But we'll have to
go very light on lunch and supper!"

Tony picked up the newspaper again.

"Can I help?"

Automatically, James started to protest, then caught himself.

"Sure, Mom, stir in four eggs as soon as the spuds are done.  Cook it
for another minute or so, and it should be ready to eat.The sound of
the spatula scraping the skillet bottom mixed with the rustle of the
newspaper as James studied carts and text about fescue grass, grain
rations, hoof-trimming, and trace minerals for a healthy horse.  He
also carefully read the section on toxic plants.

Reverend Tony slapped the paper down on the table in irritation.

"Says here that Doctor Floyd Bentson is going to take over First
Methodist in June.  Doctor Bentson will have a church car, a private
secretary, two assistant pastors, a youth minister, a music minister,
probably a swimming pool, a $50,000 salary, and a partridge in a pear
tree!"

He looked disgusted.

"I wonder if his sermons are really that much better than mine were?

Can he visit more sick people, or counsel more troubled ones?

But I forgot-he's got Doctor in front of his name!  By damn, I'm
impressed!"

Grace put plates and flatware on the table, and served the hash.

"Yes, dear, I know.  Here, eat your breakfast."

Although he agreed, James did his best to ignore Tony's tirade, having
heard it all too many times before.  He dug into the food, savoring the
flavor after adding some salt and pepper.  His parents, on a lowsodium
diet, shook on the salt substitute.  He continued reading.

"Too much new spring grass, especially rich varieties like fescue, can
lead to laminitis, commonly known as 'founder' in a horse.  If you
suspect your horse has foundered, which can be detected by excessive
heat in the hoof and the corona band just above it, stand the animal in
cool water for half an hour, followed by leading the animal around to
promote circulation for half an hour, then go back to the water.

alternate this treatment as long as possible, and permanent damage may
be avoided."

Tony spoke, 'Hey, this stuff is really good!  Thanks, son."

James nodded, "You're welcome," and directed his attention back to the
book, engrossed in hoof care.

"A horse should be shod if it is to be ridden heavily, or driven to
cart (in which case shoeing the front hooves is more important than the
rear), or will be spending most of its time on rocky ground.  Other
than those conditions, it is generally healthier for the normal hoof to
leave a -horse barefoot, since shoes tend to inhibit normal wear and
distort the growth of the hoof If shod, a horse should be unshod and
trimmed at least once every six weeks."

Those don't apply to Cherry.  I'm far too big to ride her, at least
from on top, heh, and have no intention of harnessing her.

"While barefoot, regular trimming is still required as the toe of the
hoof tends to grow faster than the heel, throwing the foot out of
balance.  Light exercise on a hard-paved road can help the hoof wear
evenly, thus reducing the need for trimming."

Hmmm.... James looked up.  "Mom, would you mind if I started walking
with you in the evening."

Grace again looked surprised.  "No, not a bit.  When did you start
getting interested in exercise?"

'Not me.  I still think exercise for its own sake is inefficient.

But it says here that to keep her feet healthy, Cherry needs to spend
time walking on pavement, and the only way I can see to do that is to
lead her.  I guess that means I'll have to walk, unless you're
volunteering?."

Grace said, thoughtfully, "No, I don't know if I could control her, and
I wouldn't want the responsibility for her.  I guess you'll have to do
it.  Sorry."

"No problem.  I didn't expect you to take over.  I don't suppose it
will really hurt me or anything.  I don't mind work if there's a
purpose to, it."

"Well, fine, come on along.  I'm not sure what Mrs. Windward will
think of it."

'I don't care what that snooty old bag thinks of it!  If it's gonna
bother you, we'll walk at a different time than you."

"No, I'm sorry.  Come along with me, and if she doesn't like it, she
can go by herself."

"Okay.  When?"

"Oh, about four or so.  The days are warming up, but it's pretty nice
about then."

"Okay.  We'll be ready."

James made no protest when his mother gathered up all the dishes to
wash them.  He went outside to his carpentry.  As he drove galvanized
roofing nails through the asphalt, James's thoughts wandered back to
Tony's bitter outburst.

It's funny.  Both of us entered the ministry against our better
judgment-Dad lasted until he retired, but I got out quick staying just
the first year I was assigned to a parish so they wouldn't be stuck
with an empty pulpit In my case it was pretty simple.  Mom and Dad
urged me into the ministry, something I didn't really want to do in the
first place, but I was determined to give it my best shot and not let
down the people in the congregations.  Those two tiny churches had been
hanging on by the skin of their teeth, no regular pastor, making do
with whatever member could be persuaded to give a little talk, or
sometimes a pastor from another denomination.

That led to the first problem I had with one of the churches.  The
leading elder's wife was dying of stomach cancer, and a neighbor, a
Baptist lay preacher, had been visiting and counseling her all through
the illness.  I suppose I should have been more understanding, but it
hurt me that the family didn't even ask me to assist in the funeral
service-and it's against denomination rules to use a church for
anything without the consent of the duly-appointed pastor.  Given the
situation, i kept my mouth shut but Dad later pointed this out to the
family after they had a while to mourn.  Nobody really won in that
one.

Of course, what were they to think of me, a "young punk kid"?

visited the churches the Sunday before I was to take the pulpits.

The old farmers were probably a little shocked to have a fat man in a
fluorescen multicolored, paisley shin, charcoal-gray suit and electric
purple socks with tire-tread sandals introduce himself as their new
pastor.

I figured that if I hit them hard and fast they'd overlook other
possible shortcomings.

'Damn!"  James looked at his thumb, then gave the hammer a dirty
look.

Just a couple more nails, and he'd have to climb back down and move the
ladder.  Work continued.

I guess matters came to a head when the Pastor-Parish Relations
Committee came to visit me at home one Saturday.  It started out easily
enough.

"Preacher, we'd like to talk to you about your sermons a little bit"
"Something wrong?  I work hard on them."

'Well, they're pretty good, most of the time.  It's more a matter of
subjects."  'What do you mean?"

"Well, you seem to always take the same kind of text" "Go on."

"Uh, it's just that-well, shucks, we were wonderin' when you was gonna
do a good ol'hellfire and brimstone sermon?"

That bothered me.  i had been hoping the subject wouldn't come up, that
maybe nobody would notice.

"I'd really rather never do one of those, brothers."

One of the others who had been standing quietly in the background spoke
up.  "Why, preacher?I sighed.  "Look let's sit down at the kitchen
table and talk about this.  I'll see if there's any coffee."

My mother (i was still living with my parents at the time, this time in
their parsonage) heard me and put a pot on to brew I kept the
conversation to trivial matter-s, talk of crops, weather, livestock
while we waited for the coffee.  It wasn't hard to get farmers talking
about those subjects.

Finally, with the passing around of the percolator, came the moment of
truth.

"Folks, you're good, God-fearing people, right?"  They all nodded
agreement "You're close to the land, close to nature, and because of
that you're close to God every day, right?"  Some smiles with their
nods.

"Then it disturbs me to hear you ask for something like this."

"Gee, Preacher, we just kind of like those old-fashioned ones.

They're fun!"

I nodded this time.  "I know But you have to ask yourselves why they're
fun!"  More puzzled looks.

"Look I've been trying my best to keep my preaching up with the message
of the Gospels, the 'Good News."  I know you all pretty well, and I
don't think there's a hard-drinkin'.  whorin' unrepentant sinner in the
whole two bunches, right?"

A look of more-or-less agreement passed between the group.

"Okay, so I've been expounding on all the good stuff in the Bible.

Heck you're all old enough to know the hellfire, -brim-stone, and
damnation parts by heart right?"

Further agreement "There's not a one of you needs reminding how bad
Hell can be just so you won't stray, right?"

I was batting a thousand.

"So, when I was studying and talking to other students, and other
preachers, and thinking about the matter, I decided that unless I had
someone in the congregation that had been dragged in, kicking and
screaming and really needed the Devil scared out of him, that there was
no good reason to ever bring the subject up more than momentarily."

The chairman put down his coffee cup.  "What i want to know is, why did
you say it disturbed you that we asked for one?"

This time, the smile left my face.  "Because, gentlemen, and I don't
want to sound too harsh here, when a group of God-fearing, moral people
asks to hear one of those beauties, I wonder how much of that desire is
motivated by wanting to feel smug about their status, the way they're
saved and safe.  I wonder how many people will be out there in the
pews, gloating a little bit over the thought of that 'llnwashed
Philistine' down the road burning forever, choking on the smell of
sulfur, screaming in continuous agony.  I wonder how much damage I'll
be doing your souls by tempting you into the sin of pride, of smugness
over your own righteousness.  'Pride goeth before a fall,' and I don't
want to be the cause of someone's fall rather than their salvation!

I'd wind up sharing the hot seat next to them, have to look into their
pain-filled eyes with my own tortured orbs, and gain extra pain from
knowing I put them there!

"Gentleman, that's my main reason.  but also, consider this: We have
more class that that Let's leave the shouting and thumping for the
Rollers."

That finished it From the standpoint of logic and intillect I won,
hands down.  but emotionally, I lost them.  I had committed a sin they
were unable to forgive-I told them the truth about themselves.  I was
young.  brilliant articulate, and a foot It didn't take me long to
realize what I had done.  People still smiled, still gave their money
when the collection plate was passed, still shook hands as they left
the church door at the end of the service.  But nobody came to ask for
spiritual guidance.  Nobody asked me how I was doing.

I had become their judge, even as they had wanted to judge others in
their own minds and hearts.

This gave me pause to reflect on the whole situation-was I really
suited to do this?  Did I truly believe all the things I said from the
pulpit?

From then on, I didn't have the stomach to continue.  I started looking
again at the Bible, reading other books that the denomination wouldn't
be pleased to know I was reading books that raised serious questions
about Christianity.

The last of the barbed wire was strung between the posts.  It was there
for strength, integrity, and tightness.  It would be unwise to depend
on it to hold a horse, particularly an unknown quantity such as
Cherry.

Many horses ran into barbed wire when they panicked, and could sustain
serious injuries to legs, bodies, even eyes as they struggled to get
free of the entanglement.

James walked over to his materials pile and started pushing the roll of
woven horse-wire that would form the actual fence.  Beg at one end, he
unrolled it against the barbed wire and posts.  Once in place, with the
tension of the stretcher against it, he began the tedious job of tying
the wire fabric in place.  This left his mind free once more.

The Bible didn't really paint a very pretty picture of God or people,
His "special creatures."  The more I looked at it the more it seemed
that God had dealt from the bottom of the deck when He made Adam and
Eve and placed them in the Garden.  The old Bible College hogwash about
"God gave man free choice, and man abused it" didn't ring very true-it
seemed more like a weak justification.  If God knew everything, why
didn't He know exactly what He was doing when He placed temptation in
Eve's path?  Why didn't He know that she would fall prey to it?

Either God knew what would happen, which meant He intended for the Fall
to take place, or He didn't know everything; in either case, it was
pretty easy to look upon God's actions toward the First Family as
rather a dirty trick I had long been a dabbler in electronics and the
other "hard sciences," and reading about advances in quantum physics,
astronomy, paleontology, and biology had given me, not a cynical
skepticism about the notion of a Creator, but rather an ever-increasing
respect for the Mind that could design a whole universe that worked so
well as it seemed to.

, Could such an awesome intellect as this be at the same time, a petty
tyrant blaming His creatures for His own design flaws?  It didn't make
much sense.  So, whether or not I bought the notion of Genesis and
Jehovah, I had to believe that people are the way we are for some
reason.

Given the power of the Creator, He could, if He so desired, obviously
have made us perfectly obedient little creatures, perfectly fitted for
the averred task of spending eternity standing around the Heavenly
Throne, chanting praises over and over, telling Him how great He was.

This bothered me, too.  Doesn't God already know how good He is?  Hell,
He made everything!  Did He go to all that trouble simply to produce a
few billion yes men?  What would that say about His psychology?

The more I studied without the blinders of early traning the more I saw
the God of the Bible as a petty tyrant a paranoid egomaniac, chortling
to Himself over all the pitfalls He'd placed in the path of mankind,
the impossible rules He'd handed down, and then patting Himself on the
back over His "mercy" at offering a redeemer-something gained only
through the ultimate blood sacrifice.  His early history with His
"Chosen People" also revealed horrific bloodshed, the slaughter of
innocent children, the piracy of civilizations by nomadic, sheepherding
brigands.

I decided that I didn't like Jehovah very much.

But ... but ... I still believed, even more, in a Creative Principle, a
Grand Architect a purpose for existence.  After careful thought it
seemed the most logical thing to believe rather than rejecting Deism
outright At about the time my year's appointment was over, though, I
had lost all respect for and belief in Christianity, at least as it was
commonly taught So.  Why, then, did Man exist?  What was our purpose?

Was there one?  I had to believe that If there were no purpose to
existence, then believing there was one certainly did no harm, and was
a comforting thought If there was a purpose, then believing and acting
as if there wasn't could lead to much trouble down the road I found my
answer in various schools of early and contemporary pagan thought The
notion of reincarnation, that souls are permanent unlike bodies, gave
purpose-you lived on the earth or wherever to learn and grow, just as
children go to school Discarnation was the "summer vacation" between
classes when your soul rested, assimilated the lessons just experienced
in the previous lifetime, correlated those lessons with previous
experiences (hidden from memory while carnate), and made an informed,
perhaps mentored, decision about the next incarnation with the goal of
learning specific things.

could live with that "Are you ready for the walk?"

James was inside, putting on fresh clothing.  He had taken a shower
after finishing the hot, sweaty work with the fence.  About all that
remained to do was mount the gate on its hinges, something he could
accomplish quickly in the cool of the evening.

Cherry's pen would be ready for her occupancy that night.  He looked
forward to celebrating it with her in the privacy of her little stable,
away from possible prying eyes.

"In a minute.  Let me get my shoes on."

He emerged from his room wearing shorts and a light shirt.

Although it was only early May, the weather was warm and muggy.

"We'll meet you around front."  Grace Falabella nodded as James exited
through the glass patio door, new lead-rope in hand.  Cherry whickered
a greeting as she saw him, and stood as he walked up, clipped the lead
to her halter and unhooked the tether chain.  They walked around the
end of the house together, Cherry tugging at the rope as she tried to
investigate everything along the path with the curiosity of a horse.

James's mother met them at the edge of the yard, and all three stepped
off into the street for a few feet until they were in front of Mrs.
Windward's house.  Grace walked to the door as her son and Cherry
waited patiently, the little horse sampling the quality of the grass on
the road's shoulder.

Mrs. Windward's voice came from her porch.  "You expect me to walk
along with an animal?  My husband and I retired here to get away from
the country!  That beast belongs on a farm, not in the city!"

To his surprise, James heard his mother's voice raised in his pet's
defense.  "Really, Wilma, you have an unreasonable attitude!  As far as
'moving to the city' is concerned, this little town hardly qualifies!

If you'd just get to know Cherry, you'd find out -she's a nice little
pony.

I wasn't too sure about her at first, myself, but I like her."

Mrs. Windward stood fast, attitude firmly set.  As Grace returned to
the road, James began to turn around.

"Where are you going?"

'Look, I don't want to interfere with your friends.  We can walk
another time, another way.  Go back and ten her I won't force Cherry on
her."

'Oh, stuff the old bag!"

James grinned in delight and surprise.

"She's always putting on airs, as though she was something special.

Well, like you said, her husband is a retired janitor, in prison, and
she sells perfume door-to-door.  She makes noises about Cherry's smell
and the flies, and I'm tired of it!  The prevailing wind blows from her
house to ours, not the other way, and the smell she is getting is from
her neighbors on the other side raising all those basset hounds.

Cherry smells good, dam it!  Kind of earthy, but very natural and
fresh."

James looked at his mother with admiration.  'I didn't know you felt
that way."

Grace blushed a bit as the three started down the street.  "Well, I
didn't at first.  But anyone or anything that can change you so much so
quickly is worth a lot to me.  I haven't seen you work so hard and be
so happy about it, or life, or anything, in years.  I even gave Cherry
a little hug and kiss this morning.  She's sweet."

A few houses down the street they approached a group of homes with a
concentration of children.  Most of the kids were outside playing in
the late-afternoon freshness.  The pony immediately drew their
attention.

Cherry shied, pulling backwards against the leash, as several small
ones ran up to get a closer look.  "Easy, girl."  James rubbed her
favorite spot on the shoulders, calming her down a bit.  "Be slow,
children!  Don't scare the nice little horse."  The kids, most of them
around eight years old, slowed down.

"Can we pet him?"  "What's his name?"  "Is that a real horse?"

'Okay, okay, sure!  First, her name is Cherry, and if you come up
slowly, one at a time, you can pet her.  Yes, she's a real horse."

One brave girl advanced, hand out.  Cherry held back with her body, but
stretched out her nose to investigate.  She lipped the hand.

"Tee-hee!  That tickles!"  said the girl as she quickly pulled her hand
back.  Cherry jumped back, too.

"I'm sorry, little horsie, I didn't mean to scare you."  The girl
reached out again, this time offering a sticky fragment of Tootsie
Roll.  -Will she eat this?"

James thought quickly.  He didn't want anyone offering his newfound
mate treats but himself.  But why,.?  Was he jealous?  Oh, hell, it
couldn't hurt.  "I don't know.  Just be sure you hold your hand flat so
she doesn't get your fingers by accident, and don't move suddenly."

Cherry reached her nose again and sniffed the offered treat.  She
folded her lips around the chewy chocolate for a moment as if
contemplating the taste, then decisively closed them and started to
chew, hard.  The children, James, and Grace all laughed as they watched
her chomp vigorously on the candy, head bobbing up and down with the
effort, the filly's enjoyment obvious to all.

When it was gone, Cherry eagerly reached out, searching for more.

The little girl, Candice if James remembered correctly, said, "I'm
sorry, Cherry, that's all I have."

Meantime, the other children had gotten brave again, and some offered
Cherry grass plucked from their lawns.  She took most of the offerings,
then stood still as the children petted her nose, neck, and
shoulders.

"We have to keep going, now," said James-as he proudly stroked Cherry's
neck, then pulled gently on the lead.

Similar scenes were repeated three times in the short, six-block walk
that was his mother's rout.  Once, one of the parents whom James
vaguely knew came out with her children to fuss over the pony with as
much delight as the youngsters.  Their path took them by a retirement
housing complex and some of the widow ladies seemed infatuated by
Cherry as well.

James felt good at the end of the walk.  He was proud of Cherry, and he
had received more positive attention from his neighbors during the
brief half hour than they had shown him during the previous six
years.

He was already looking forward to the next evening's perambulation.

 CHAPTER ELEVEN June 1987 As the end of the month drew near, James
and his parents had settled into a routine.

During the morning hours, Cherry would be brought out of her pen to
graze various parts of the back or front yards while James took care of
business.  Mrs. Windward tried to make trouble about that, too, but
the police were tiring of her complaints and the chief owned a pony for
his own children as well.  "Maam, the law just deals with stables and
enclosures.  It doesn't say anything about temporarily staking out an
animal.  You're wasting our time and making ill feelings over something
you can't do anything about.  Do you want to be like the
Sheisskopfs?"

The comparison didn't please Mrs.  Windward and she shut up.

James really enjoyed walking around town with Cherry, and soon they
started going much farther than his mother cared to go.  She went back
to a slower, shorter walk with Mrs. Windward while man and mare took
off at a brisk pace.  When he noticed his expensive, comfortable work
shoes rapidly wearing their soles out, James invested in some cheap
walking sneakers from a local discount store.

Pretty soon they had established a route.  Down the length of their
street to the supermarket on the county highway that ran through town,
across the road and down a hill to the city park where they would
circle the swimming pool and explore the small creek that ran through
the park, back up to the video rental store where they were both
welcomed inside (James maintained a computerized stock list for the
owners, and Cherry never, ever had an "accident" on their floor-in
fact, she never relieved herself away from one area of her pen), up a
small rise to the local Easy-Mart, sometimes stopping for a bottle of
soda, over past the car wash to the drive-in restaurant.  Cherry
eagerly pulled ahead on that lap, since she knew there would be a treat
in store for her.

Depending on finances, temperature, and mood, James would sometimes get
Tootsie Rolls, which he would hold in his teeth for Cherry to take from
him.  Other times, to the delight of onlookers, he would buy a small
chocolate ice cream cone that Cherry eagerly devoured.

Heading home the back way, Cherry greeted more of her friends.

Children waited for them to come by so they could pet the pony again.

James found himself becoming friendly with many of the mothers and
other women along his route.  It took a while before he realized that
he was now relating to them as plain people and that he no longer
undressed each one with his eyes, speculating on how they might be in
bed, mind constantly in a turmoil of lust.

The drug stuff languished, neglected, in his desk drawer.  He had not
had a shot or even swallowed a pill since Cherry came into his life.

He enjoyed all the attention she brought him even if people thought he
was a bit odd.  No problem, he was odd.

What else do you call someone who can only relate to women when he
doesn't want sex from them, when his desires are fulfilled by an
animal?  but still, it's better than before.  Cherry has simple needs,
and she makes them plain to me.  Some grain, some hay, water, a little
simple grooming and affection.  She happily returns companionship and
sex for these.  Hell, if women were that simple then life would be easy
for every man.

James knew deep down inside that this was but&hit.  He had deliberately
ted himself, socially, to fit his crippled emotional abilities.  But
that was okay, wasn't it?  He did what he had to do, what he could
do.

One morning found James in the music store where he once managed the
service shop, talking with his old friends.  He happened to mention
that he needed to get home and take care of his pony.  Ron, the drum
department manager, shot him a surprised look and asked, "What the 
fuck are you doing with a pony?"

Ron had a good sense of humor, and James gave him a calculating look
before answering, "Hell, a man has to do something for sex!"

Ron laughed.  "Damn, I'd pay money to see that!"

James grinned.  "You couldn't afford it."

"Think it's that good, do you?"

"No, it's the overhead.  Consider the cost of a romantic dinner for
two, one of whom eats like a horse, while the other one is!"

The general manager joined in the laughter.

Life was good.

"Eric Hendrix quickly reached in his pocket and pulled out an
ordinarylooking pencil.  There was no lead inside the willow wood,
which had been cut at dnight under a full moon and carefully inset with
mystic symbols and runes before being painted yellow.  He made a series
of passes and flourishes, constructing an invisible wall of force
between himself and the hell-spawn that Rev.  Doctor Alexander, the
disguised Satanic High Priest, had set upon him.  The creature howled
with a thousand voices of a million damned souls in eternal torment as
his shape melted into a smoking puddle.  With a smile of triumph, the
agent of W.I.C.C.A. again turned his attention to the evil Rev.  Doctor
Alexander."

James leaned back in his chair and contemplated the paragraph.

With a grunt of disgust he deleted it from the computer's memory.

Shit Six months of work turned out fourteen good chapters.  What an
idea.?  Action-adventure-occult-horror.  This book would sell in three
different bookstore departments.  Fourteen good chapters!  I started
out with the protagonist suiciding and being rescued at the last minute
by an underground organization that had been fighting The Evil for
centuries.

He fought child molesters, homeless people kidnappers, environment
polluters, and now, the climax, a Satanic High Priest disguised as an
internationally known televangelist Everyone who reads it as much as
I've completed, wants to see more.  They like it And now I'm having one
hell of a time bringing it to an end James had written things
off-and-on for years, but the sale the previous year of two short humor
pieces to a professional market had given the writing bug sharper
teeth.  He got the urge to write something bigger, a novel.  The
solitary life of a writer had a certain appeal, and the idea of getting
paid for putting his nightmares down on paper had an even stronger
one.

The problem was that his last chapter was turning to crap.  Two months'
worth of crap.  James shook his head.  Something was wrong.

He couldn't seem to get any oomph, any pizaz into the words.

Now the Sorcerer resembled James Bond of Sunnybrook Farm.

I suppose the words came out of that famous angs the sense of
frustration and despair.  Damn.  I wonder if I can recapture that
feeling?

Oh, well.  Cherry had come in heat that day.  She was a good lay any
time, but the first heat cycle had convinced James that stallions
really had something to get excited about.  She was twice as
enthusiastic, spreading her hind legs and pushing back with a vigor,
shaking her head and whickering in a continuous low growl.  Her smell
was different, and he needed no lubrication as her juices flowed
freely.  As soon as it was full dark he would go outside and join her
in the stable.  Even though the little building provided privacy, the
weather had turned too hot for much close physical activity during the
daylight hours.

As he cleared the computer screen, the phone rang.

"Hello?"  His face assumed a neutral expression as he heard Sheila's
voice.

"Hi.  Look, the kids want to come back and visit and see the big
fireworks display on the fourth.  Can you put us up for a couple of
days or should we get a motel room?"

"Uh," James's mind blanked out at the exact moment when he needed it
racing.  "Oh, uh, no!  There's room here, I'm sure.  When are you
coming" James liked his kids-he thought.  He wasn't sure all the time,
because it was so damned hard to relate to children.

'I thought we'd come on the afternoon of the second and stay about four
days.  That'll give them time to shoot a few fireworks of their own,
see their old friends, and rest up before we go on to my
parents'place.

Is that okay.?"

"Oh, sure!  I'd like to see them."

"Diana has a pet bird; we'll bring him along since we can't leave him
in the apartment by himself.  Do you think your cat will bother the
bird, we'll make some kind of arrangement."

"Good.  I think you'll like him."

"Okay.  It'll be nice to see you all again."

"Uh-huh," her voice sounded a bit dubious, 'well, it'll just be for a
short visit, and I imagine I'll spend most of my time with my friend
Theresa, but the kids want to see you and Grandma and Grandpa.

Listen, I can't afford too big a phone bill.  We'll see you in a few
days.

Bye."

"Goodbye."

James hung up the phone, head swimming.  What now.?

Oh, shit What'll she say when she sees Cherry?  I know what Diana will
do-that little girl is nuts about horses-but Sheila knows all about my
early history with them.  Douglas?  Who knows?  But he's an easygoing
kid.

James calmed down a bit.

To hell with Sheila!  She can take it or leave it damn it!  I'll just
wait and see what happens.  She lost any right of control over me when
she left The senior Falabellas were elated at the news.  They had been
closely involved in raising the two children, much more closely than
with their other grandkids, since they lived nearby.  James and Sheila
had sometimes paid them to babysit, helping stretch their modest church
pension.

"We can fold out the couch in the living room for a bed for the kids.

I suppose we can make up a pad with that foam rubber for Sheila to
sleep on the floor."  Grace was full of plans.

'Mom, the kids have sleeping bags.  They can sleep on the floor of my
room, and Sheila can use the couch as it is-that way we won't have to
move all of your furniture around.  But I'd best get out the flea spray
and do aD the rugs again so they don't get tormented."

"Right.  Oh, what should I cook?  What do they like, again?"

"That's easy.  The kids love beanie-weenie or macaroni and cheese.

Nothing fancy or Diana won't eat it."

"I know.  Fried chicken!  Douglas likes mine better than his other
grandma's, he's told me so.  Mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans,
and an apple cobbler."

Tony's eyes lit up at the prospect of all the forbidden food.  It was
like an oldtime Sunday dinner again.  Surely he could get a few bites
of the good stuff when no one was looking A diabetic diet could get
damned boring, and James usually only cooked enough of his own food for
himself.

James grinned at his mother.  "Calm down.  It's just a short visit, and
I'm sure that they'll have other things on their minds besides the
menu.  Relax enough to enjoy your grandchildren."

The admonition did little good, as James already knew.  His mother went
into a tizzy of housecleaning, a gray-haired whirlwind zooming this way
and that as he and his father sat at the kitchen table and watched in
amusement.  "Your mother is happiest when she's doing something like
this.  In almost fifty years I've never found a way to stop her, and
she'd be frustrated as hell if I ever did."

The time went quickly.  James and Cherry walked by day and made love by
night.  Service calls came in and were dealt with in a quick and
efficient manner.  James considered buying some fireworks for his kids,
but decided to let them select them themselves, with a bit of fatherly
guidance and a strict eye on the budget.

Thursday, July 2, 1987, dawned with a clear sky and a promise of
heat.

James had only one call to make that day and he made it quickly.

About noon he fed Cherry some grain and moved her over to a newly mowed
section of the yard.  She looked a bit askance at him as he approached
with garden hose, bucket, brush, and a plastic tub of horse shampoo.

"C'mon, little girl, let's look our best for the visitors."  Cherry
quickly decided that she liked taking a bath as the water, not too cold
and not too warm, sluiced out dust from her coat.  Dunking her tail in
the bucket and swishing it around raised no objections, and James was
careful of her sensitive eyes as he washed her face with a damp
sponge.

She swayed in rhythm to the scrubbing of the soft brush on legs, back,
and belly.

%en the job was done, rinsing and all, Cherry was shining, her
reddish-brown coat gleaming in the sunlight.  James was rather the
worse for wear, mud on his legs and bare torso as he led the little
pony to a dry spot and tethered her there.  No sense in having her roll
in the dust back in her pen, which is likely exactly what she would
have done if given the chance.

A quick shower and change of clothes, and it was time to nervously
await his fate.

About four o'clock the blue car pulled into the driveway.  Before
Sheila shut off the engine, James was out the door and his children
were unbuckling their seatbelts.  Father and offspring met in the
middle with lots of hugs and babbling.  Diana ran back to the car and
extracted a bird cage.

"This is Budgie, Dad!  Isn't he pretty.?"

"Yes, he certainly is-a pretty blue.  Does he talk?"

'Oh, sure, I've taught him a lot of things!  He can say his name, and
'I love you' and 'Shut up' and-" 'Hey, Dad!  I got my white belt in
karate!  And I have lots more I-egos and some new G.I. Joe stuff and-"
James let the words flow around him, babbling like a refreshing stream
over a stony bed.  He had never realized how much he missed his kids.

He never let himself feel it.  Now he knew it would have made his hell
twice as tormenting.

He stood as Sheila approached.  "You're looking well, James.  Have you
lost some weight?"

"Thanks.  You look good, too.  Yes, I've started walking for exercise,
and I've lost about eighty pounds."

She seemed to warm up a bit.  "Well!  I've started walking, too!

They have a track in the city park, and a friend of mine and I go out
early in the mornings when it's cool and do a mile or two."

"I usually do my walks in the evenings-if you brought your shoes, maybe
we could go on one later, kinda help work the kinks from the long drive
out of your system, let the kids stop off and see their friends on the
street."

"We'll see.  First thing, we need to visit the bathroom.  You haven't
moved it or anything, have you?"

James grinned.  "Um, lemme see ... I think it's still in the same
place."

He held his counsel while the car was unloaded, bathroom trips were
finished, and the travelers had availed themselves of the iced tea.

Then he said, 'C'mon out back.  I want to show you something."

He led them through the front door and around the south end of the
house.

"A HORSE!"  screamed Diana in that broken-glass voice so many little
girls have when excited.  She started to take off on a dead run.

James caught her by the arm.  "Let's go a little slower so we don't
scare her."

Douglas seemed interested but not overly excited.  Sheila, James could
see when he sneaked a sidelong glance at her face, was wearing a
careful, blank expression.

By now, Cherry was used to being approached by strangers and children,
although she was not quite as cooperative on her own territory as on
the street, held by a lead-rope.  James reached into a pocket, took out
a Tootsie Roll, and broke off half, which he handed to Diana.

"Hold it in your hand with your fingers and hand flat so she can't bite
them, and reach out slowly to give her a chance to smell you and the
treat."

Diana squealed with joy at Cherry's lips.  "She tickles!  Can I ride
her?  Huh?  Please?"

"I don't know.  She's pretty young, and hasn't been ridden yet.

Sheila, if you'll get on one side to catch her if she falls, and I'll
get on the other side, I'll let Diana sit on her back."

"Okay."

Cherry was perfect-she held still for the children, didn't step on any
feet, and even made up quickly with Sheila, who seemed to take a shine
to the animal.  After a few minutes, everyone but Diana was ready to go
inside where it was cooler, the afternoon sun doing a yeomanlike job.

"C'mon, 0 little horse-crazy daughter of mine.  Maybe later we can take
a walk together with Cherry."

"Oh, can I ride on the walk?"

"No, sorry.  She would need horseshoes to carry anyone on the paved
road, and I haven't had any put on her.  Besides, she still shies a
little at traffic, and you'd fall off without a saddle."

Diana was persuaded to come in with the rest.

The adults gravitated to the table while the kids reacquainted
themselves with the house and the old Siamese cat James first got as a
kitten just before he and Sheila met.

Talk ensued on a variety of topics, mostly dealing with Sheila's new
LIFE in western Kansas-her school, the town (its primary business was
the final fattening, slaughter, and packing of beef, the activities of
the children, her parents.  The topic of Cherry didn't arise.

As the sun neared the horizon, the outside air cooled down some.

'How about that walk?"

Sheila looked tiredly reluctant.

"You know it's important not to skip an exercise routine," James
chided.  "Besides, supper wig be about ready when we get back."

'Okay, okay.  Kids!  Get your shoes on, it's time to go for a walk!"

Sheila dug into a grocery sack and pulled out a shoebox.  James put on
his tennies.  'I'll meet you out front in a minute."  He went out back
to get Cherry and led her to the porch, where she grazed the front
grass as they waited.

He had to caution the children not to walk too close in front of .or
behind Cherry so they wouldn't catch any trouble if she spooked at
something or indulged in high spirits.  Diana in particular seemed to
have trouble realizing that she wasn't a lifesize "My Little Pony" toy,
but an animal with her own personality and the sharp hooves and strong
teeth to enforce her own sense of well-being.  Fortunately, James was
already familiar with this problem from his experiences with other
children.

"You have to understand that Cherry wants to watch out for danger, and
anything making sudden movements nearby, or something that she doesn't
recognize or isn't expecting can make her kick or jerk away."

"But I won't hurt her!"

"I know you wouldn't, darling.  But she doesn't know that yet.

You've been reading lots of horse books and horse stories, haven't
you?"

"Uh-huh.  And I saved up my allowance and bought a horse magazine at
the store, but it's kind of hard to read."  .

, "Wow!  You've been reading it?  And you're going into second grade
this year?"  James knew his kids were smart, but ...

"I like to look at the pictures.  But I can figure out most of the
words, and Mom helps me with the hard ones."

James looked across at Sheila, who wore a proud smile.  "She's reading
on a fourth-grade level already."

He gave his daughter a contemplative, respectful look.

'That's very good!  I'm proud of you.  Okay, so have you read of the
wild horses?"

"Oh, yes!  The ones now and the ones the Indians used to catch a long
time ago."

"So, you know that horses had natural enemies when they ran free,
enemies like wolves and bears and cougars?"

"Uh-huh."

"To survive, all horses really have is speed to run away.  They can
fight some with their feet, but it's safest for them to avoid danger,
right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay!  Good.  When you think about it, this means that a horse has
been bred all these years to constantly watch for danger.  Their eyes
are arranged so they can see most of the way around themselves without
moving their heads, and their ears are always twitching, keeping track
of the sounds around them."

"Sure.  I've watched them on TV movies.  They like to move their heads
from side to side, and they're always watching, except when they wear
blinders or something."

"Then a sharp little girl like you can understand that Cherry gets
nervous when there's too many people close to her so she can't watch
out for things, like that trash can by the road, that just might be a
horse-eating tiger!"

Diana laughed.  Douglas chuckled, but then ran ahead to his best
friend's house.  An almost-ten-year-old had more freedom than his
little sister.

Thus, in fits and starts, the walk proceeded normally down the home
street.  Sheila didn't seem to mind the interruptions, visiting with
the children and parents who came out for the usual chat-and-pet
sessions.

"Are you back to stay?"  asked one woman.

'No, we're just here to visit over the Fourth."  Sheila's expression
was a bit odd, but James put it down to the tactless question.

James altered his usual route out of consideration for tender 
children's feet and skipped the ramble through the park.  From the
supermarket they proceeded to the convenience store directly across the
side street, avoiding the highway with its heavier traffic.  James was
glad to see that it was not busy, and Lucy was on duty behind the
counter.

As soon as she spotted the party approaching, Lucy stepped out of the
door.  "Hiya, Jim-boy, how ya doin?"  She was an imposing figure of a
woman with a belly that hung almost to her knees, and a voice and heart
to match.  "How's my favorite four-legged girl?"  Cherry nuzzled Lucy's
side as she accepted her ear-scratching with evident pleasure.

"We're fine, Luce.  Recognize these little bandits?"

"Sure, even if they don't look like you, Saints be praised!  Need
something cold to drink on a hot day like this?"

"Urn, not right now."  James saw the hopeful looks vanish from his
children's faces.  "I thought we'd get some ice cream at Dave's
Drivein."  He took delight in watching fallen faces soar to new
heights.

"How's your book coming.  You know, Sheila, your husband is one hell of
a writer!  He has me on the edge of my seat, wondering what's going to
happen next."

James tried hard to blush.  Again, Sheila wore an odd expression as she
looked at him.

"Yes, he's always been good with words."

"Well, when I'm working the night shift like this, I always look
forward to him walking by, but I try to convince him it's just to see
his pony.  Don't want his head to swell up any bigger than it already
is, yknow!  But he's sure been good about coming down later at closing
time.  There've been so many robberies at convenience stores lately, it
makes me and my husband feel good to know he'll be here."

This time James blushed for real.  "Aw, you know it's just because I
can't help flirting with you.  Irish women do that to me."

Lucy roared with laughter, making Cherry start a bit.  "Hah, I thought
you was German and English and Eye-talian, and here you've been kissing
the Blarney Stone!  Go on, get down the street, I can't afford o have
my reputation spoiled by the likes of 'you -hanging around.

As the group walked off, Sheila asked, "Is she really Irish?"

James grinned.  "No, Polish, actually.  But I ran out of good Pollack
jokes, so lately she's been pretending to be Irish so she can be
insulted when I tell an Irish joke.  She's quite a gal-four kids and
husband, and she's working this job, another part-time one, and putting
herself through business school in the mornings.  Plus, she likes to
read my stuff.  I like her."

"It's plain she likes you, too.  Are you fooling around with her?"

Her expression, once more, was indecipherable.

"Jealous?"  James disarmed it with a grin.  "No, she's just a friend.

I bought her a bottle of cheap champagne for Christmas, and she took it
home to her husband.  He's a nice guy, too."

By this time, they were approaching Dave's Drive-in.  One of the
counter girls saw them approach the walk-up window.

"What'll it be, today?"

"Four-no, five small ice-cream cones.  Chocolate okay with everyone?

Five chocolates."

James started pulling napkins from the dispenser as the highschool girl
prepared the treats.  He handed the ice cream around after paying the
tab.

"Why five cones?  Couldn't you just get a bigger one for yourself if
you wanted more?"

"No.  Watch."  Sheila and the kids paused in their eating as he led
Cherry out onto the gravel parking lot.  She was reaching hard, craning
her neck in an attempt to get to the cones held high in one hand.

As soon as they were clear of the path of foot traffic, he draped the
lead rope over his shoulders and took a cone in each hand.  As soon as
she could, Cherry started devouring her treat, dribbling melted
confection on the ground.  James fed it carefully, having learned that
Cherry was fully capable of knocking most of it to the ground, then
attempting to eat it, gravel and all.  Not wanting a sick pony on his
hands, he soon learned how to prevent that.  With a handful of napkins
he cleaned off her muzzle and legs as soon as she finished, keeping his
own cone out of her reach.

I It took only a few more napkins to clean up the kids than it did the
horse.

After a late supper the kids soon fell asleep, tired from the long
trip, the walk, and the general excitement.

The elder Falabellas retired to their bedroom, leaving James and Sheila
to themselves at the table.

Small talk soon died away.

Sheila laid her hands flat on the table and looked James in the eye.

"Okay.  Why did you really get a pony?."

He entwined his fingers on the table top.  "I think you know."

"Yes.  And???"

He looked her square in the eye and did the best job of lying he had
ever done.  "It didn't work.  You can't go back."

Sheila nodded.  "That's what all the books tell me."

'Books?"

"You know, the self-help books to learn about why you do certain
self-destructive things.  Ones on living with divorce, or how your
parents can screw you up.  Ones about drug addicts."  She looked hard
at him.

"You've changed."

"I certainly hope so.  I've been clean for some time, now."

"Not just that.  Your attitude's different.  You seem to-I don't know,
exactly.  But it's a big improvement."

"Well, that's why I kept Cherry even after I found out-you know."

He took a deep breath.  'I think she saved my life.  It's a long
story.

Maybe I'll tell you sometime when you have a-couple of weeks.

Maybe not.  I'm still sorting through it."

"I know what you mean.  I've had a lot of time to think, too.

Well, I'm totally beat.  I need to go to bed."

"I have a few things to do out in the shop, but I'm tired too."

"Just be careful when you come in-remember, there's kids on the
floor."

"I'll watch out.  Good night."  James turned off the kitchen light that
would have shone in her eyes on the couch, and went out into the
shop.

After waiting a few minutes to let Sheila fall asleep, he quietly let
himself out the back door.  He trembled with excitement as he stroked
Cherry's flanks, then lifted her tail.

s  CHAPTER TWELVE July 1987 While Sheila slept late that morning, the
third of July, James rose with the sun.  He cooked link sausages and
eggs, finishing up just as two hungry mouths attached to active bodies
bounced into the kitchen.

"Oh, boy, is that for everyone?  Where's the toast?  Do you have any
jam?"

"You didn't fry the eggs, did you?  I hate fried eggs."

He did a little dance with skillet and plates, barely managing to avoid
dropping them as he dodged small feet and faces.  He made it to the
table intact.

"Yes, Doug, it's for all of us that are up.  Tio, Diana, I scrambled
the eggs."

"Are we gonna buy fireworks today.?  I want some bottle rockets, you
can't buy them in Kansas."

"Oh, I hate bottle rockets and loud bangs!"

"Yes, we'll go down to the big fireworks market later today.

Diana, I'm sorry you don't like all of them, but we'll find you some
that you do like.  I'll have to ask your mother about the bottle
rockets."

"I like watching the ones you do at night.  An'l like smoke bombs.

Can I have smoke bombs?"

"Yeah, Diana, that's fine.  Hey, let's kind of keep our voices down,
there're still folks trying to sleep " "Can I wake Mom up to ask her
about the rockets?"

"No!  Gosh, Doug, we won't be going for a while-let your mother
sleep.

It's a long ten-hour drive, and she's pooped!"

James had time available, since he prudently scheduled incoming service
calls for later the next week.  Besides the time spent shopping for
fireworks (he took the kids without Sheila), he treated his family to
lunch at Bill's, took them all swimming to escape some of the heat,
and, of course, went on the evening walk.

As soon as it was reasonably dark, he set up a sheet of plywood in the
front yard on which to light groundworks such as fountains and
spinners.  Doug had spent much of the day with fnwackers and bottle
rockets under his father's loose supervision to prevent fire or
injuries.

Diana not only had her smoke bombs, but "champagne poppers," snappers,
snakes, and one package of relatively quiet ladyfingers.

Sheila sat on the porch, most interested in the fountains and Roman
candles, her favorites.  They saved the sparklers for last.

Two tired children went to bed, the boy looking forward to a day spent
with his best friend and more fireworks, the girl to more swimming and
the big show on the night of the Fourth.

James made another check outside to be sure that no fireworks, theirs
or anyone else's, had started any grass or roof fires.  He really
wasn't too worried since the weather had been rather wet, but a few
precautions never hurt.  Sheila took a long, cool shower while he made
his rounds.  He noted without pleasure that Cherry was a little
agitated, and saw some expended large rocket casings in her pen.

Damn the Sheisskopf bunch!  They've got three fucking acres in back of
their house, and they have to shoot their shit to come down on my place
and scare my horse.  Assholes!  Their extra land was a sore point with
James, anyway, since much of it bordered his back boundary.

It ran from the rears of three adjacent lots to the railroad right-of
way; James had tried to buy it sometime back, but had no luck catching
the landowner.  Tom sneaked around and bought it, lying to James's face
when the surveyors were back there checking property lines.

The idiot bought the land, and now he just lets it grow up in weeds.

Big deal, big-shot "country gentleman" with his stupid little lawn
tractor that he treats like a Rolls-Royce.  Whenever he takes it out of
his shed, his fat pig wife and retarded children come out and all stand
around watching, like he was a priest performing some magnificent
rite.

What a dick!

James shook his head and went back inside.

Sheila was sitting on the edge of the couch, wearing an old cotton
nightgown he remembered well.  "Come over and let's talk a little."

"Sure."  As he sat down next to Sheila, he noticed that it was her old
nursing gown with the slits in front to allow a baby easy access to a
breast.

"I wanted to tell you something.  You've changed, changed a lot!

I noticed it yesterday, but it really shows the more I see of you."

"God, I hope so.  I was really a mess, huh?"

"Yes.  I had to leave, do you understand that?"

"I didn't, not until a couple of months ago.  But you're right, it had
to be done."

"One of us would have killed the other one, and it would have been a
toss-up who.  But I'm impressed by the changes you've made."

"Gee," James Omed, "maybe I should have taken off a few pounds
earlier."

Sheila elbowed his ribs.  "It didn't hurt-but I think that's more a
symptom of change, a basic change."

"Ten me more, I'm eating this up!"

"Yeah, right, you big-headed brain.  I think what's impressed me more
than anything else is the friends you've made.  I never knew you to
have very many, and no women; at least, not ones that you didn't pant
after like a dog on the street."

"Ouch.  It was that obvious, huh?"

"Yes.  And they could see it, too.  Some of them even told me you made
them very nervous."

"Uh-huh.  I know.  Hey, one thing I've had this last year is time to
think.  Maybe one of these days I'll tell you the whole, long, sordid
story."

'Well, I have a few things to talk about, too.  In fact, I made
notes.

But right now I look at you and I see the man I fen in love with, the
man I married, not the stranger, the frightening thing I lived with for
the last five years."

"Uh-h-h."  As Sheila moved on the couch, a tit poked out of her
nightgown.  James pointed, "My changes aren't the only things that're
visible around here."

Sheila looked down, then smiled.  'It's been a while since you or
anyone else has seen that."  She giggled softly.  "Like to see more?"

"Yeah."

'You could maybe take a closer look?"  She reached down and hafted her
right breast in her hand.  "Real close.  Yes, like that!  Oh, how can
you see with your tongue?  Never mind, keep looking!  Just like that.

Yes-s-s-s.  . . ."

Sheila's different too!  This is the same hot-pantsed broad I first
bedded down while watching "The Three Musketeers" on TV, after we drank
that bottle of wine.  That first nigh the first time I ever had a woman
spend all night in bed with me, screwing our brains out We figured out
later that it must have been one of those first five or six times that
Doug was conceived.

They slowly reclined on the couch, Sheila reaching for his zipper as
his free hand snaked up under the hem of the nightgown.  Jesus she's
running like a backwoods creek A creek-in-the-crotch-sounds like a
toy-bet they'd sell good, though ...

Mouth-to-mouth now, the two groped, probed, stroked each other.

"Do you-have-any condoms?"

"No.  Uh, got any foam or anything?"

"Oh!  No, I-haven't needed anything-like that for some time yes!

There.  A little softer.  Yeah."

"Me neither."  Probably better not mention why I don't need it.

"Oh, shit!  Damn, I want to make love!  No, I want to fuck!  I need
plain, sweaty, sleazy sex!  I want to feel you in me."

Sheila bent and took James in her mouth for a moment.  He moaned.

She straightened up again much to his frustration.  "That still makes
my jaws ache.  Damn, if we did it without something, sure as shit I'd
get knocked up again.  You know how our luck runs."

nine?""No, my mouth just won't stretch that good.  It hurts.  I know!

Got any Vaseline?"  yeah ... you thinking what I'm thinking?."

"I'll bet I am.  You know how I like it up the rear ...

"Heh.  I'd think you were abnormal if that wasn't so normal for you .

. ."

"Shut up, get the damn lube, and plug my butt!"

"Yes, ma'am!  Right away, ma'am!  With pleasure, ma'am!"

After Sheila fell asleep, that night's sex with Cherry was even better
than usual.

"Look, I promised my folks we'd come see them after the Fourth, and I
can't back out on that.  But we'll be back in three days, and we need
to do some serious talking."

It was midmorning on the fifth.  Doug and Diana were properly belted
into the back seat of the car, and Sheila sat behind the wheel, window
open as she let the air conditioner get a head start.

"Okay.  I'll miss you!"  James leaned in for a kiss.  He gave a quick
squeeze to a breast out of sight of the children.

"Quit it!  Oh, quit it some more .  . ."  Sheila squirmed a bit, then
he removed his hand.  "I'll-we'll see you soon."  With that she rolled
up the window and backed out of the driveway into the street.

Okay, what the hell now, ye Gods and Goddesses?

The day of the Fourth, James and Sheila had exchanged little glances,
traded caresses whenever they were alone, and spent a good deal of the
night after getting back from the fireworks display engaged in repeated
intercourse.  Thank God there was some place open where I could buy
contraceptive foam.  My dick would be raw hamburger if we'd done it all
anally!

He went back inside and sat at his desk.

I suppose it just couldn't remain nice and simple, could it?  What the
hell do I do now?  Feast or famine-either I'm not getting laid, or I'm
buried up to my armpits in pussy!  Which one do I choose?  Do I have to
make a choice?  Maybe not Sooner or later, Sheila will go back to her
school, she's signed a contract That'll at least give me a little
breathing space to figure all this crap out I have to choose ...

which one?  just on pure sex-I dunno.  It's really a toss-up.

Cherry's pussy is a damned sight tighter, and she's got that clenching
action.  it smells and tastes better, too.

Ever since I've known her, Sheilas has smelled like a dead tuna in the
sun, even right after a shower or douche.  Of course, so has every
woman I've had, except that black stripper.  I wonder if all black
woman taste so fresh and clean?

On the other hand, it's kinda nice to be able to do it lying down, face
to face.  And tits.  Tits!  Sheila has some great ones!  i wish horses
did-it's frustrating being a tit man, and your mane squeeze just ain't
got none!  And when she's ho Sheilas the best piece of pussy I've ever
had on two legs!

shit Maybe if I'd told her the truth the other night But I couldn't
She'd probably never let me see the kids again.  Of course, if she
catches me and Cherry, that'll be the end of it too.  Sheila Oh, well,
I have three days.  I wonder if the Shitheads are in their back yard?

It's still cool enough to go out in the stable ...

James and Sheila spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch after
dark, when it was cool and the fireflies blinked over the vacant field
across the street.  Deep discussions, happy memories, philosophical
thoughts, all were traded and savored as they sat there, sipping iced
tea.  Plans were made.

When he wasn't going half-crazy trying to figure out what to do, James
was deliriously happy to be back with Sheila.  Or at least delerious.

"I have to go back for a year.  I signed a contract."

'Damn.  I suppose you have to."

"Uh-huh, I do.  What would I live on here if I moved right back?

It's too late to pick up a teaching job for this school year."

"Besides, we shouldn't move too fast, right?  We need time to sort out
things and be sure that we really want to get back together.  I mean,
it feels right, right now, but we don't have a great track record for
making snap decisions-not good ones, anyway."

"You're right.  Okay.  Here's how we'll work it.  Me and the kids'll
stay back here for the rest of the summer, most of the time.

Then, when school starts at the end of August, I'll take the kids and
we'll go back out west.  You can come out whenever you can, and stay as
long as you can."

"Well, I wouldn't feel right about leaving Mom and Dad alone for too
long, not to mention Cherry.  It'd be a dirty trick to ask them to take
care of her for more than a few days."

"I know.  But a few days a month or so would be all right, wouldn't
it?"

"I suppose so.  It's gonna cost, but it'l be worth it."

"I'll make it worth your while, fella!"  Sheila reached and squeezed.

"Mmmmm ... I believe you just might do that."  They were now spending
their nights together in bed.  Mostly.  James still managed to be alone
with Cherry, too, either after Sheila fell asleep or during the day
when she was running around town, visiting friends.

One day she came back and announced, "I talked to Jackie today."

"Who?"

'Jackie-the secretary at the school board.  She told me they were short
a speech therapist, and she called the new superintendent, and he was
delighted at the thought that I'd be available.  He wants me to sign up
again."

'What about your Kansas contract?"

"They really can't do anything nasty if I'm moving out of state due to
a family rearrangement.  I called, and -explained the situation, and
the administration out there seems to think it's wonderful that we're
getting together again!  They said they'd release me if I asked."

'Wow!

You mean, you could move back right now.?"

"Yes.  Of course, I'll rent a house or something.  It wouldn't be fair
to move your parents out, and we still need to take this slow."

'Right, that's good thinking."

Uh, that's nice, I think ... What do I want?  This makes the choices a
little harder.  If she's around all the time, sooner or later she'll
catch me and Cherry.  Of course, if she gets her own place for a while,
that'll be less likely-but it'll also be harder to sneak out because
she'll expect me to spend a lot of nights with her, I'm sure.

, , What's so hard about giving up sex with Cherry, anyway?  I only got
her to have some convenient pussy, and Sheila's providing that So what
if it's different and better in some ways?  Can't I get beyond my
balls?  Is my packer going to always overrule my brain?

Is it-is there something more between Cherry and me besides sex?

No!  It's one thing to outsmart the system, but something emotional
...

that really would be perverted!

In love?  With an animal???  No.  Love hurts too much.  I'm not in love
with anyone or anything.  Oh, sure, I love Mom and Dad, and my kids,
and old Kusty, my ca even Cherry in a way.  But I'm not in love!

Not with Cherry, not with Sheila.

Love's too dangerous.

"Hey, where are you?"

"Oh!  Uh, sorry.  Just thinking."

"What abouter, about moving.  Yeah!  That's gonna be a project, you
know?"

"Of course it will.  I moved out there in a U-Haul trailer, though."

"Don't forget your sister and her husband, and your parents-they both
took big loads out.  And haven't you bought anything since you were
there?"

'Just a day bed.  And Doug's bunk beds.  And some big wooden
cabinets.

And some shelving units ... you're right, it might take more to come
back than it did to go."

"So, when's your rent due?"

-The thirty-first.  But I need to clean it up good to get my deposit
back.

"It'll probably take a truck, and I don't have that kind of money
available."

'I get paid the twenty-second, and I have some left right now."

"Maybe we need to make a quick trip out there and look over the
situation so I can figure out how big a truck we'll need."

"Hah!  Good idea-and we can maybe figure out what to do with this!"

Sheila grabbed James's crotch.

"Ow!  I can think of something to do with it now .  .

"Hey, someone might see!"

"That's their good luck.  Cmere, wench."

Driving, renting a storage unit, stashing most of the belongings-those
they couldn't haul back in his pickup-and cleaning the apartment took
four days.  James and Sheila worked hard by day and fucked hard by
night.  James enjoyed the games they played away from parents,
children, and nosy neighbors, but he found himself missing Cherry.

"Let's do it horer, doggie style!"

Sheila abruptly sat up and crossed her legs.

"Hey, I heard what you started to say.  Did you tell me the truth about
Cherry.?"

James stroked a breast until Sheila pulled it away.  "Yeah, sure.

Look, I tried it a few times, but it wasn't the same.  She doesn't have
any imagination like you do.  I mean, she was better than nothing, and
better than most women, but not better than you!"

Shit I hope I can get past this, after all the work we did here!

"Really?"  Like this?"  Sheila ran a hand over James's genitals, then
slipped a finger further down and probed at his ventral orifice.

"AHHhhh-h-h-h ... yeah!  Hoo-hah, that feels strange!"

"Hmmph.  I'll bet it feels just the same as it does for me.

Pretty damned good."

"Uh, well, now that you mention it .  .

Sheila opened her legs again for his hand, then twisted around onto
hands and knees.  "C'mon stud.  Just remember, I'm the only mare in your
pasture, now!"

"Giddyap, Sheila!"

"Damn, do they want us to rebuild the goddamned place while we're at
it?"

"Quit bitching, we're almost done.  We just need to pull the stove and
fridge out and clean under and behind them.  We washed all the
woodwork, shampooed the carpets, spackled all the holes, and cleaned
the oven.  We're almost done."

"Great.  Then all it takes is a ten-hour drive back, then return with a
big truck and empty the storage place, and pick up the stuff you have
stored in Wichita, and .  . ."

"Stuff it, buddy.  Let's just do it."

"Dammit, I've looked all over town, and there just isn't anything for
rent that I can afford, or that I'd live in."

"What about the parsonage down the street?

Weren't you looking at that?"

"They want $400 a month for it, plus a big deposit.  You know what
those bastards in Kansas did about my apartment deposit."

"I still say you oughta go back and sue 'em.  We had that place
clean!

Dirty crooks just figure a deposit is a bonus they get from every
tenant.  If I'd only thought of bringing a camera along for proof."

"Forget it.  I don't want to go back to that town again, except to load
up my shit and go."

"We're going to have to do that pretty soon, too, or the rent will run
out on the storage unit and you'll be trying to move while you
teach."

They frowned at the ground in front of the porch.

"Do you suppose we could all fit in here?"

"With all your stuff, and Mom and Dad's, and my stuff.?  Whew."

"I know, I know-but there's a lot of duplication.  We can have a big
yard sale."

"A big one!"

 CHAPTER THIRTEEN August 1987 Sheila took the children shopping for
back-to-school supplies.  Tony and Grace were having their blood-sugar
tests and James was all caught up on the day's service calls.

He was sitting at the kitchen table working a crossword puzzle, wishing
the heat was a little less oppressive so he could go "visit" Cherry
when the doorbell rang.

'Oh, hi, Mrs.  Windward.  Sorry, my folks aren't home."

"That's all right.  I wanted to talk to you.  Can I come in?"

"Uh, sure, I guess."  James held the door and stepped aside.  'Can I
get you anything?  Iced tea?"

'Thank you, no."

'Well, have a seat here at the table.  It's where everything is done.

What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to talk to you about your pony.  I think-" James interrupted
with a frown.  "I think the subject is covered!"

"Please don't interrupt until I'm through.  It's not what you expect,
perhaps."

"Go on."  James lit a cigarette and took a sip of tea.

"I think maybe I've been unfair," she held up a hand as James opened
his mouth.  "I've been watching, and you seem to take good care of the
animal, and your children enjoy it as do the other children in the
neighborhood.  While I'm still not pleased to have one so close to my
house, it hasn caused the problems I expected when you first brought
him in here."

"Her," corrected James.

'Please.  This isn't easy for me to say."  She took a deep breath.

"I've been thinking about the time you stood up for my husband over
that trouble with the Sheisskopf girl, when she said he tried to molest
her."

"Yes, I still think she was lying about it.  My kids heard her bragging
on the school bus one day that she lied to the judge and got him sent
to prison."

"But you defended him from the first, even before anything your kids
heard.  Why?"

James thought a moment.  'I'm not sure, I guess.  I just knew Paul and
I knew the Sheisskopfs.  They he all the time and try to cause trouble
for people.  The day it was supposed to have happened they came over
here and asked to speak to me and Sheila in private.  Then they told us
what Paul did, or allegedly did.... They said the authorities told them
not to tell anyone, but they thought we should know since we live next
door to you and our children played in your yard and liked to visit the
two of you.

"Sheila was horrified, and wondered why I didn't go kill Paul on the
spot.  In fact, she got pretty mad at me about it, but she has her own
problems and has a very strong, overprotective mother instinct.

However, a little later she calmed down, especially after I reminded
her that Tammy S. had made the same accusation against a little boy
living on the other side of their house the year before-an accusation
obviously false.  She was just mad at him because he wouldn't play with
her."

"Well, you and Sheila and one other family were about the only ones in
town who stood up for him.  Even our church didn't want anything to do
with us; they asked me to attend somewhere else!"  Mrs. Windward's
facial lines stood out as her eyes misted.

'Then that attorney we hired, the only one we could afford, he advised
Paul to plead to a lesser charge-and they sent him to prison anyway!

He spent two years in prison, an old man!  He got out and didn't care
much about anything after that.  You were the only neighbor who would
even talk to him.  You helped me with my trees, the snow, my car that
time it broke down-when Paul died a few months after his release, you
were the only one besides our family who came over or called or went to
the funeral.

"You were a true friend and a good neighbor, and when you were having a
rough time I gave you trouble because you bought a pet!

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-" she stopped to blow her nose in a lace
hanky, "-shouldn't have acted like a mean old woman!  I was just so
upset about Paul.  I still am.  But you and your parents and your wife
and children" (sniff) "you've been wonderful, and I just wonder if you
can forgive me?"

James patted her hand across the table.  "Sure, if you can forgive me
for being rather unkind in turn.  God knows I should understand how
loss can make a person act in ways they normally don't.  Look, let's
just call it even and go back to being neighbors the way we used to be,
okay?."

Sniff.  "Okay.  Thank you.  When my son comes over to mow my lawn,
would you like for him to give the clippings to your pony.?"

"Sure.  She'll like that."

Mrs. Windward stood.  'Thanks for the talk.  I have to go run my Avon
route now-but come over anytime you want."

James escorted her to the door.  "I will.  -And, by the way, please
drop off one of your catalogs here when you get the chance.

Sheila has a birthday coming up pretty soon, and I'd like to get her a
few things."

The Sheisskopfs hated me while that was going on.  Since I refused to
join them in their hate sessions, and even offered to appear in Paul's
behalf as a character witness, Tom's parents told him I was planning to
go to court and call Tammy a liar.  He started throwing big rocks into
high grass in my back yard, hoping I'd hit them with my mower.

They were easy to spot and i threw them back Then he tried pieces of
rusty wire-that worked.  My mower threw a chunk of it backwards, and it
went through my ankle.

, After I got off the crutches I fixed the bastard, though.  I went
back on that land he bought behind my house and drove some two-foot
lengths of 314-inch steel reinforcing rod into the ground, leaving just
enough sticking up to catch his stupid mower on his toy tractor.  I put
them along the back line in the far corner from my place.  They had
been lying around under the eaves behind my house for over a year, so
they had lots of rust on them.  Nobody could prove they hadn't been in
the ground for years.

it was beautiful He hit all three pieces at once.  He was going fast
enough that when the front lip of the mower deck hit them, it bent
right back into the blades and got chewed up.  Before he could stop the
tractor or the whirling blades lost their momentum, the machine moved
forward far enough for the blades to catch the bars.  The blades,
bearings, spindles, and pulleys came apart Pieces of steel and cast
iron whirled through the air, slashing three of the four tires,
punching a hole in the engine's crankcase, and even breaking a tie-rod
on his steering gear.

It cost the stupid bastard almost two grand to fix everything.  I
figured we were even, since that's about what his wire trick cost me in
medical bills and lost income.

Tom obviously decided he'd better quit messing with me.  It was about
time for them to switch targets again, anyway.  They started picking on
two of the kids down the street Shitheads.

October 1987 "Cherry, you're something else."  Sheila was sitting on
the back stoop next to James, commenting as the pony busily "groomed"
his hair with lips and teeth.  She was staked where she could walk
right up to the door, and showed signs of wanting to come in.

Sheila wouldn't allow that, since she and James had just finished
laying new vinyl tile in the kitchen.

Cherry seemed to pay no heed to Sheila beyond moving her attention to
James's face, giving him a tongue bath.

"Yech!  Horse spit!"  Sheila made a face.

"Hey, it's not so bad!  You let dogs lick your face, and you kiss
cats."

"But they're house pets, and cats are so clean."

"Uh-huh.  And just think what the cat might have licked last .  .

Sheila paled as Doug and Diana cracked up.

"Oh, Mom," said the girl, "I think it's sweet!  Cherry loves Daddy."

"I've noticed.  Look, now she's French-kissing.  Ugh."

James turned his head for a minute.  Cherry didn't mind; she proceeded
to lick out his left ear.  "Hey, a big, sloppy horse kiss is great for
an upset stomach, since their saliva is so high in sodium
bicarbonate."

"I'll let you have it.  I'll stick to seltzers when I need something.

Hey, what's she doing now?"

Cherry was nuzzling and nibbling at James's shirt pocket.

"Oh, she just wants a cigarette."  He proceeded to feed her one.

"Isn't that bad for her?"

"Too much would be, but that's how the old-timers used to treat their
horses, mules, and burros for worms."

"Oh."

November 1987 "Careful, there!  Easy.  Easy.  Okay, it's clear of the
door, tip the couch back level.  Watch your step on the tailgate."

Two of James's sisters and their husbands were there to help move the
elder Falabellas to a small house a few blocks away.

Earlier in the week, James had talked with his mother.

"Son, I think it's best if we find a little place for ourselves.

It's just too crowded, and Sheila and I rub each other the wrong way
sometimes.  I think she resents having someone in what she feels is
'her' kitchen.  We'll still be close by for you and your kids, but we
need to be independent as much as we can for as long as we can.  It'll
be okay.  We'll be okay."

I was actually relieved.  Hardly a day went by lately that Sheila
wasn't griping about something Mom or Dad did.  True, with four adults
telling the kids what they can or can't do, it wasn't easy for them.

Diana took maximum advantage of the situation, often playing the
grownups off against each other.  Dad would, one minute, outraged at
something she did, the next having a fit because I'd spank her a couple
of swats because I knew that she knew better.  Diana played off that
kind of thing like a tennis pro plays off a slow lob.  Doug is pretty
good, but he tries to please everyone, and the poor kid sometimes goes
crazy trying to follow three or four sets of orders.  It doesn't help
that he's hyperactive, and can't remember sequential instructions,
either.  He tries his best It's good that they're moving out-three
bedrooms plus a family room that Sheila and I use for sleeping,
one-and-a-half baths, just a little dinette, and mixed diets-it's a
wonder we haven't had more trouble than we have.

Early December 1987 "Ah, it's nice to get away from Joplin and go where
we can do some real shopping!"  Sheila stretched her arms behind her
head.

James glanced at her with a polite grin, then returned his attention to
the highway.

Springfield isn't really that much bigger than Joplin, but they do have
some heavy-duty shopping areas-the Battlefield Mall, South Glenstone
Avenue with all the minimalls spread out along it the world's largest
Bass Pro Shop-but I suppose we won't be going there.  I wish we were;
they have one of the biggest selections of guns within hundreds of
miles.

- They hit Pier One Imports, where James amused himself looking at
brass horses and digging through the broad selection of incense for
something that might help in a spell.  Sheila, as usual, went crazy
looking at all the baskets and wicker-work.

Toy stores yielded Lego building-block sets that were unavailable in
Joplin, and certain "My Little Pony" figures and accessories.

James manfully and patiently walked through store after store of
women's clothing and shoes, reading the paperback book he had wisely
stuffed in his back pocket before leaving.  In the late afternoon,
Sheila called him from where he was waiting.

"Come look at this, honey."

With a sigh, he replaced his bookmark and put the book in a hip
pocket.

A quick visual scan located Sheila within the small shop, standing next
to a lingerie display.  Lingerie stores made James nervous, as they do
many men.

What if people think I'm some kind of pervert trying to buy ladies'
underthings for myself?  Hah, I mean, I guess I'm a pervert but not
that kind of pervert I better make sure I bluff it out good, leave no
doubt 'Okay, sweetie-pie, what is it?"  he said to Sheila.  'this is my
wife.

Sheila," he said heartily to the salesperson.  'We've been married
almost ten years.  Happily married.  We have two children.  Natural
children.

Oh, I mean, there's nothing wrong with adopting, it's wonderful and
takes a lot of love, but we made our children-I mean, uh, we, that is,
I .  .

James wound down in dismay as he saw Sheila and the saleslady choking,
trying to keep from breaking into open, roaring laughter.

Okay.  I blew it What now?  Run?  I'd love to, but I'd never make it.

I'd trip on a gum wrapper and wind up face down in a bikini panty
display.  Brace yourself, man!  Chin up, chest out stiff upper lip and
all that rot Queen's man, British tradition, a thin red line.  Face the
music.

"What's the matter with you?  I'm a queens man-" That did it.

giant howls broke over racks of sweaters, blouses, nighties, lacy
underthings, peek-a-boo bras.  The two women doubled up with laughter
and James's face fell further "Queen's man?"  Oh, shit that's not what
I meant to say!  My tongue got tangled in my imagination.

"Queen's man."  A-humph!  "Queen's-" uh, oh hell!

James's face cracked, he snorted and gurgled, then guffawed along with
the other two.

People are looking at us like we're crazy.

He sank slowly, helplessly to the floor.

Christmas Eve 1987 The children were in bed after serious effort on
their parents' part.  The TV was playing softly in the background, the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir presenting traditional hymns.  James and Sheila
sat on the couch, exchanging private presents.

'Oooo, and what have we here?"  Sheila tore the paper, causing James an
inward twinge.  For so many years, growing up, he had learned to
carefully unwrap gifts so that the paper could be saved.  There was an
odd comfort in seeing the same paper under the tree, year after 
year.

His favorite paper had been dark green with little Santas and
beribboned packages of red and gold printed on it.

He could remember twelve Christmases using that piece of paper on
progressively smaller packages, carefully trimming torn edges to
smoothness, taking off only the barest minimum.  Likely enough, his
mother still had the small remnant carefully tucked away in her box of
Christmas paper.

Sheila held up a black lace baby-doll nightie.  Her hands were clearly
visible through the material.  "Heh-heh-heh!  Now how is this supposed
to keep me warm on a cold winter's night, huh?"

James leered at her.  "It's not.  It's supposed to stoke my furnace so
I can keep you warm!"

She dug through the paper.  "Where're the panties?"

"Panties?"  James used his best Mexican Bandito voice, 'We don' need no
steenkin'panties!"

"Hah!  I'll show you, Fidel!  Open this one!"

James opened the light, flat box.  Inside was a pair of panties.

Woman's panties.  Black, skimpy ones with lace.  "Queen's choice?

Do you think they'll fit me?  Ow!"

Sheila let go of his ear.  "Silly!  Look closer."

He held them up, spreading them out by the waistband.  "Olio!

They ran out of material on these!  Or maybe someone forgot to sew the
crotch shut!  ' 'Yeah.  Seems a shame, doesn't it?  If I wear them,
it'l be just like not having any on at all."

"Hmmm ... you may have a point, there.  That's a nice thought, but
isn't there anything for me?"

Wordlessly, she handed him another package, similar to the first.

The box held a sky-blue G-string, obviously cut for a man's groin.

James cracked up.  On the cup was sewn an assortment of things.

There were felt eyebrows over plastic eyes, the kind with black discs
that rolled around inside.  Two round, floppy ears protruded from
either side.  In the middle, though, centered under the eyes, was an
elephant's trunk.

A quick look confirmed James's suspicion that the trunk was hollow, and
sewn to a hole in the cup.

"Me Tarzan, you Jane?"

"No, silly, me Jane, you Simba or whatever the hell the elephant's name
was!"

"Me Dumbo!"

"Right.  C'mon, Jumbo-Dumbo!  Let's play with our presents!"

New Year's Day 1988,12:01 AM.

"Happy New Year!  Happy Anniversary!"

James and Sheila hoisted their glasses of Diet Pepsi as others around
them lifted varied beverages.  Sounds of fireworks and exuberant
gunfire echoed through the night as southwest Missouri rang in the
official Central Standard Time new year, a leap year.

Gary from down the block asked, "How is it that you two got married on
New Year's Day'.?"

James answered first.  "Simple.  A close look at tax laws revealed that
it would be advantageous to file our 1977 tax returns as singles, and
we were in a hurry to get married, but we could put it off a few days
to take the tax break and-OUCH!"

Sheila took over as he lifted his foot and shook it to see if anything
was broken.  'Don't listen to that crap.  It sounds good, but the real
reason James insisted on January first was so he wouldn't forget our
anniversary!"

Gary nodded, his motions exaggerated-by alcohol.  "Hell, makes good
sense to me!  Both of them."

Later, alone, Sheila asked, "What's wrong.?"

"Wrong?  What do you mean, wrong."

"You-your thing, it keeps falling out.  Am I doing something.?"

James sighed and rolled off onto his side.  He caressed Sheila,
bringing her to orgasm with his fingers.  She reached for him to return
the favor, but he was soft.  She turned and stared straight at him.

"Hey, look, it happens to every man now and then," James told her.

"It's late, we're both tired as hell.  It's okay.  It's not your fault
or anything, don't feel inadequate or guilty."

They fell asleep.

March 1988 It's my birthday, it's almost midnigh and I haven't heard
one word or seen a thing about it Sheila and I haven't had sex
since-well, since New Year's.  She won't talk about it just pretends
everything is normal She moved her day bed into another room, and
didn't invite me to bring along the trundle I use.

She goes to bed real early so I won't try to wake her up.  Then she
still leaves it for me to get up before she does, feed the kids, get
them dressed for school, watch for the bus ... hell, I don't mind
taking care of my kids, but who does she think she's fooling with this
goto-bed early crap?

I'd have a gawd-awful case of blue balls if it wasn't for Cherry...

June 1988 "Hello?"

A blurred voice on the phone.  "My left side, I can barely move it.

Mom's gone to-to the church."

"Dad?  DAD!?  I'll be right there!"

"Rev.  Falabella suffered a severe stroke due to a blockage just past
the right carotid artery.  We think we got to it in time; he'll live,
and may recover some use of his left side.  But he'll be in the
Recovery and Rehabilitation Center for at least six weeks.  He may be
confined to a wheelchair.  We really have no way to predict the outcome
of these things."

"Thanks, Doc.  Can we see him now?"

 CHAPTER FOURTEEN Summer 1988 "Come in, come in!  Mr. and Mrs.
Falabella?  I'm Jim Young, your counselor.  Have a seat.  Yes, please
sit together there on the couch.

Get comfortable.  Now, tell me, do you know what you want from your
marriage?"

James and Sheila attended the counseling sessions every week.

They made up their lists of expectations, lists of things they liked
about each other, lists of things they didn't like, kept diaries of
little hurts and mean gestures.  James soon quit being complete and
honest, because Sheila seemed to react worse and worse to everything he
said, although he tried his best to be fair and balanced, making sure
to point out positive things she did and admit it when he screwed up.

But Sheila seemed to take anything he mentioned as a personal attack.

She quit attending the counseling sessions in the middle of August.

James kept going, finding Mr. Young (M.A. in psychology) an
understanding and enlightening fellow.  He told him of his early
experiences with intersexual social relations.

September 1988 "Damn you!"  James looked upward and stared through
ceiling into the sky.  "Damn you to your own hell!  How could you?"

He knew better.  He didn't want to watch the Jerry Lewis MDA
Telethon.

But, somehow, he did every year.  James didn't know whether to believe
all the hype, the tear-jerking, the deliberate emotional appeals shown
every Labor Day weekend.  Sometimes he suspected that he and half the
nation were being played for suckers.

I hate Jerry Lewis movies-it figures that the French, those miserable
snobs, would love him.  But those kids-those little kids, cute as
buttons, cheerful, smiling, looking at Jerry and the TV cameras with
hope, with love, even while they know they're dying... Damn you!

How can you claim to be a loving God and do these things to bright
sweet little kids?  How?"

James again screamed his question to the heavens.  He addressed not
only his Pagan gods, who he knew didn't care all that much, but also
the God of Israel, Jesus, and all the saints of Christendom.

How can any god billed as "the God of Love" do such a thing to little
kids who don't deserve it?  The Universe isn't fair!  How can I bitch
about my little troubles, cry in my beer?  I'm still healthy, more than
those children.  So I'm just not a family man; so sooner or later, I'm
gonna probably have to leave Sheila and Doug and Diana because I'm not
good for them to be around all the time.  So what?

THOSE KIDS WILL NEVER HAVE A CHANCE!

Despite his doubts, James finally picked up the phone and called in-a
pledge.

Finally, one evening in early September, James brought up the subject
of his first animal sex, then gradually told the counselor about his
current affair with Cherry.

The guy is good.  He's holding his poker face well, although I'll bet
this is the first time he's heard a story quite like this!

Jim Young asked for details and made some notes as James did his best
to answer honestly.

"So, am I a candidate for the booby-hatch, or what?"

Jim smiled at James.  "No, I don't think so.  Look, we're about out of
time.  Let me look up a few things this week and talk to some people.

I can tell you are still troubled although I must admit that you have
made one whopping lot of progress on your own."

"Augh.  A week?"

Somehow, the time passed....

"Come on in, James."  Jim Young stood near an easel with a stylized
drawing of a human head and brain, holding a pointer.

"Should I take notes, teacher?"  James grinned.

"Maybe, but I rather imagine you will have no trouble remembering
this."

James settled down on a comfortable easy chair.

Jim sat on the edge of his desk, within pointer-range of the easel.

"First, I want to discuss human needs."

"I assume you know where you're going with this.  I hope it's the same
direction I want to go."

"Nervous?"

"Uh, a little ... I just want to know if I'm crazy."

"I don't believe so.  I don't think you believe that, either.

Want to know why?"

"I've wanted to know 'why' for years."

"I know."  Jim tapped his pointer on the drawing near the midbrain.

"Let's begin with basics.  Right around here is the brain's pleasure
center.  We found it by inserting electrodes into this area and sending
tiny electrical currents through them.  The people who volunteered for
the experiment said they experienced a fantastic, undefined pleasure
when we turned on the juice.  Later experimenters confirmed this."

"I've read about them."

'Right.  Okay, let's talk about drugs.  You were a heavy-duty addict
for quite a while, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, here's what happens when you do drugs, most mood-altering
drugs.

The pleasure center is kind of like the thermostat on your furnace at
home.  You usually have it set around seventy degrees; but when you
take drugs, at first it's like a sudden, extra burst of heat.

Pretty soon, though, if you keep it up, the pleasure center's
thermostat reads the extra heat and turns off the furnace.  That's when
you level out it takes a constant supply of drugs to keep at a normal
level.  It takes a, bigger dosage to 'feel the heat,' more and more
drugs to get your rush.  Pretty soon you can't take enough to regain
that early burst of pleasure."

"Yeah."

"And then when you stop .  .

"Boom!  Crash-bang!"

"Right!  Your thermostat is now set way lower than normal to compensate
for the drugs, and when the drugs aren't there, your 'barefoot'
pleasure level is way down.  The result is depression, serious
depression.

It takes a while for your brain to regain its balance."

"But that didn't happen to me!  Well, it did sometimes, when I ran out
and couldn't finagle another prescription, but not too bad, and not at
all this last time."

'I know.  That was one of the first clues.  Actually I didn't figure it
out, but my boss, Rick, spotted it right off when I was talking to him
about you."

"That's not normal, though, so are you sure I'm not crazy.9 Or maybe
it's some kind of side effect of narcolepsy'.?"

"That's another thing-how long has it been since you had a sleep
attack?"

"Uh, gee, I don't remember for sure.  Not since I quit taking drugs."

"Right.  I got your records from your neurologist, and I believe he was
correct in his initial diagnosis.  You definitely had narcolepsy, you
showed all the symptoms of the classic syndrome.  He's all excited
about your change.  We suspect that the massive overdoses might have
straightened out your brain chemistry."

James's eyebrows had climbed during the little speech.  "So?

What's the answer, then?  Why didn't I crash, hard?"

"The only thing we can think of is that somehow, something replaced the
drug stimulation in your brain.  Exactly when was the last time you
shot up?"

"Just before the man delivered Cherry to my house."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, hell, then I was too busy to do drugs, and I worked hard fixing
up the place for her.  That's all it means!  I went to bed tired that
night, woke up early and worked hard the next day.  Somehow, I was
always just too busy; I never really missed the drugs.  Finally, I
flushed the rest of them down the john, and burned all my rigs.  Do you
think there's something more?"

"Yeah.  We'll get back to that in a bit.

Look, there are a few more things I want to cover about the brain.

First, you smoke, right?"

"Like a chimney."

"Okay, now you've heard that nicotine is more addictive than anything
else we know about?"

James made a wry face.  "You better believe it!  Dropping the speed,
even the times when I had to stop because I ran out, was a piece of
cake compared to the times I've tried to quit smoking."

"Okay, listen to this.  The reason nicotine addiction is so strong is
that it alters your blood circulation, your breathing, your heart
rate.

It changes all sorts of things-and your body adjusts just like with
other drugs.  But when you quit ... everything tries to snap back.

It's different from the pleasure center dropoff with other drugs,
though.

This time, you're not merely depressed, but your brain is convinced
that something is seriously wrong with your body.  You've probably said
'I'm dying for a cigarette' before, right?  Well, your brain is
convinced that you really are!  It triggers a survival instinct."

"Wow, that makes sense!  When I've tried to quit, I'd not only get
nervous, but scared, and that just made things worse!"

"Yes.  I quit five years ago.  I hid in the den for three days, afraid
I'd bite my family's heads off.  They were understanding, but it was
still hard on them."  Jim's dark face split with a gleaming grin.

"Whew.  Okay, what's this got to do with me and Cherry?"

"Ever heard of endorphins?"

'Morphine-like compounds manufactured in the brain?"

"Right.  Runners and joggers sometimes get addicted to something called
a runner's high.  Prolonged exertion stimulates the brain to produce
endorphins.  They act as powerful pain-killers, but they also often
give you a mild euphoria.  In enough concentration, they can be very
intoxicating.

"There are other ways of producing endorphins, and these chemicals are
one thing that can help ameliorate the removal of a drug habit.

Now, for your case....

"One of the most powerful ways to produce endorphins is emotional.

Ever hear the phrase 'addicted to love?"  James stared.  His mouth
moved, slowly, but no words came for a moment.

Then: "Are you telling me I'm in love with Cherry?"

"Seems likely."

"But that's-that's sick.  Really sick!  Are you now saying I am
crazy?."

'No!  You need a few more facts before you jump to conclusions!"

James reluctantly settled back in the chair, thoughts a-whirl.

Jim came over and sat on the arm, gripping James's shoulder with one
powerful black hand.

"Listen, my friend.  Listen good.  I told you about survival
reflexes.

There are certain things the human body needs to survive.  Air, water,
food-these are the very basics.  Take away air, and pretty quickly you
can't think of anything else but getting another breath.

Take away water and within hours, you're uncomfortable, in days,
desperate.  You can last longer without food, but your body and mind
don't like it.  A lack of any of these three sooner or later results in
extreme survival reflex behavior."

"Huh, I could do with some starvation now and then."James grinned.

Jim smiled back.  "Most of us could at times.  But there's a fourth
need.  Maybe it's not as obvious as the first three, but all normal
people have a need to love, to be loved.  wild, crazy, romantic love
gives a with, crazy chemical high.  But the brain doesn't seem to get
habituated or inured to endorphins, so a long, deep love keeps feeding
the brain.

Your mind likes this.  Take it away, and eventually you either find
some way to replace it, or you spend your LIFE in misery."

"But-an animal?  I mean, she's great for sex, but love?

Especially after Sheila came back?"

"You've been hurt so many times by women.  You were hurt especially bad
by Sheila.  Think back.  Did you feel best after sex with her, or with
Cherry?  Whose company do you enjoy the most?"

"Oh, God!  I think-I always felt like I had to watch myself around
Sheila.  I think ... Cherry."

Jim squeezed James's shoulder again as it shivered under his hand.

"It's all right, it's okay, James.  Look here, brother, you've taken
some ,awful hits in your life.  Nothing that, by themselves, would be
impossible to get over.  But your dice rolled bad.  You got a wild
combination, and I think you realize it.  What you don't realize is
that a lot of people would be sitting in the corner playing with their
toes after what you went through!  So, you bent a little bit.  So
what?

Many people would have broken!

"Sure, Sheila came back-after you had already made the most important
life-adjustments to your situation.  You managed to integrate yourself
pretty well.  Maybe a few pieces are out of place, but you've done
awfully good with what you have.  Tell me, did you ever really trust
Sheila not to go away again?"

"Uh, I don't think so .  . ."

"It would really astonish me if you did.  Here's the situation.

You need love.  You don't trust Sheila to not take it away again-you
don't really trust any woman not to take it away again, so you wont
give it to them in the first place.  You aren't interested in men.

Your first sexual experience was with a horse.  That was what you
turned to when your relationships with women failed.  What do you
expect?"

'Can I change that?"

'Do you really want to?"

"Well, jeeze, man, I want to be normal!"

'What's that?  Whose definition of 'normal' are you trying to fit?

I tell you, boy, I've been at this for eight years and had six years of
training before that, and I still don't know what 'normal' is!

"You can spend a lot more time and a lot more money trying to fit
someone else's notions, or you can accept the fact that you have come
to a workable solution to your problems.  Quit trying to be 'normal'
and just be yourself.  A likable, intelligent, sensitive person who
marches to the beat of a different drummer."

"Is that what you ten your gay patients?  I mean, if they want to
change."

"Matter of fact it is, at least in most cases.  Some people literally
kill themselves like you were doing, trying to fight what they are.

You've made a lot of progress by yourself, but both me and my boss
agree you'll be happier if you take the final step and admit that you
love Cherry and learn that it's okay to love Cherry; she sounds pretty
nice to me.  Even if it means accepting that you are limiting yourself
to something less than a full human relationship, it's better than the
frustration of repeated failures at something that just isn't in the
cards for you.  And it shows every potential of being very, very good,
at least for you.  Maybe, someday, you'll manage to heal the last
wounds and find a woman to share your life-but if not, you'll have
lived a happier, fuller LIFE with your equine lover than you would have
otherwise."

James sat, motionless.  "Do I love her?  I don't know, it just seems
so-it's just something I never wanted to think about.  But, maybe .

.

."

"Hey, look, man, it's half an hour over time.  The girls at the desk
are gone, and my supper will be cold and my wife'll be hot under the
collar.  Let's talk another time."

James and Jim stood up and began walking through the deserted
hallway.

"Thanks.  Uh, I'll think about it.  Maybe, if you're right .

.

maybe I won't need to come back."

"That's okay, too."

James grinned.  "How do you ever expect to get rich if you keep curing
all your clients?"

Jim bent and slapped his knee.  'Rich?  Here?  From honkie turkeys like
you?  Man, don't worry, that'll never happen!  I get the same salary
whether I waste my time with guys who make me late for supper or sit
around on my ass!  Besides, there's always more where you came from!"

'Heh heh.  Yeah, I kinda figured that.  Hey, look, it's been great, and
you've given me a whole bunch to think about.  You'll either see me, or
you won't."

"I kind of hope I won't.  You had me digging in books I haven't had to
open for years, and they still didn't help!  You're a rather unique
case, you know?"

"I've been told that before, but rarely so nicely," James said as they
walked out into the parking lot.

"Well, if you don't come back for another session, let me know what
happens some time."

James unlocked his car door.  "I will.  Heck, maybe I'll buy you a
beer.  It's a damn sight cheaper than your rates in there."

Jim grinned at him in the streetlights, and closed the door as James
reached for his seat belt.

James stopped in an all-night fast food place and sipped a soft drink
while his mind took a few minutes off-not really thinking, simply
feeling.

After an hour, he went home.

Sheila was already sound asleep, so he went to his bedroom/den and
undressed.  He put on jogging shorts and thongs, the same ones he had
used the very first time with Cherry, and went out back.

Cherry softly greeted him as he approached the gate.  He went inside
the stable, she followed.  James sat down on the feed bunker and
stroked the soft nose that Cherry extended, again feeling more than
thinking.

She nuzzled his chest, licked his face, then nudged his crotch, tail
elevated.

"Horny, little girl?  My little lover?  Me too!"

They made slow love, using their whole bodies in foreplay, rubbing
against each other, caressing with hands, lips, noses, teeth, using all
that each had to use; then, when his testicles and penis ached with
arousal, he entered her and they rocked on their feet in blissful
harmony.

It was more than James expected, more than he ever remembered
experiencing with Cherry or Sheila or....

They were transported-James with realization, Cherry, it seemed, with
an animal sense of something special.  Their orgasms came together,
seemed to last forever.  James stayed hard for a long time, standing
still he held deep inside his lover.

Yes-my LOVER.

The counselor was right Ah, there, it's going down, now He moved back
to the bunker by Cherry's head and sat, naked.

She tongued him clean, licking off the juices of their love as he
stroked her eyes, her ears, ever so gently.

"I love you, little girl.  I'm in love with you.  You're so sweet, so
funny, so-oh, Cherry, my darling!"  He hugged her neck, hard, her head
over his shoulder, rubbing his cheek against her sleek coat.

James awoke as the sun came peeking over the eastern horizon.

He was lying in soft straw outside the stable, shorts again covering
his loins.  Cherry was asleep on the ground beside him, the top of her
head resting on his left arm.

James was happy.

 EPILOGUE AND Author's NOTE September 1992 Why write a book on such a
disturbing topic?  Why didn't James come to a bad end, one that
moralists might claim he deserved?

These are two of the many questions I have been asked most often.

The answers may not please you, but I hope you can understand them.

I wrote The Horseman because several people I respect felt the story
had to be told.  Despite our differences, people are still much the
same in basic nature-some merely have other solutions to their
problems.

James is not alone.  I think it is important that others in his
situation discover that they are not alone, either.

Most of us march together through our lives and our society more or
less in step with each other.  We tend to look askance at those who
"march to the beat of a different drummer" or, in this case,
"hoofbeat."

I hope to show that sometimes we have little choice in what we do.

Our society is constantly changing, a world in evolution.  Nothing
major happens overnight, but African Americans and other ethnic/racial
minorities today hold an ever-improving place at the table in our
country, and gays are not, perhaps, fully accepted, but they rarely
need fear physical harm or imprisorunent if they reveal themselves.

This change did not take place during all the years that these
so-called 'perverts" kept quiet and accepted unjust treatment, or hid
themselves in the closet.

People had to be made aware of the situation, and recognize the
humanity of those trapped within it.

While I certainly don't advocate zoophilia as a general solution for
sexually or socially frustrated people, I believe zoophiles should be
recognized as practicing a nonthreatening alternate behavior, as
certainly undeserving of society's (all-too-often severe) approbation
and, in many cases, as leading a viable lifestyle.

There are two general classes of people who have sex with animals.

There are the "bestialists," or zooerasts, those who have one or a few
sexual contacts with an animal, or use them only when a more "normal"
outlet is not available.  James placed himself in this first category
for a long time, denying his true orientation.

Then there are "zoophiles," those of us who prefer an animal as a mate,
often forming deep emotional relationships with them.  In my research I
discovered that there is a small but significant number of people in
the United States who, for one reason or another, do prefer an animal
companion to participating in the mating dances and rituals of humans,
the sometimes hurtful and hateful games that people play with or
against each other.

Some of their motives are similar to James's, some differ in in detail
or in general.  One common thread runs through our stories, though.

"The day I found out that there were others like me, that I was not
alone, was one of the happiest in my life.  It is such a relief to talk
to another person who really understands because he's been there,
too!"

This partially explains why I wrote this story.

Why didn't I tie it neatly into a moralistic bundle?

Because reality doesn't always work that way.

The Horseman is a work of fiction and a work of truth.  James really
exists, his story continues.  Some of the minor incidents in the book
are fictional although based on fact, some are revised and edited for
better story flow, some happened exactly as portrayed.  Names, as they
say, have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Some of the characters are real, exactly as portrayed, some are
conglomerates of several people, some partially or totallyary.  The
location is roughly correct, but don't bother trying to find James.

I'm busy.  I value my privacy, and stand ready and able to defend
myself and those I love from intrusion, interference, harm, or
harassment by self-appointed moralists.

I am James.  I am also someone else.

I wrote the main body of the story in the third person because some
parts were very difficult to put onto paper from the first-person point
of view.  Once in a while I had to hit the "Save" key by feel, because
some of these memories still hurt-a lot!

Cherry died, tragically, on September 13, 1988, four days after I
admitted to and accepted the existence of our romantic love.  She
expired with her head on my chest, arms around her neck.  My wife,
children, and friends of mine and Cherry's mourned with me; many were
surprised when I didn't take up the needle again.  I was not the least
surprised of those parties.

Although two veterinarians tried hard to save her life, Cherry
succumbed to cyanide poisoning from eating wilting cherry leaves.  Our
good friends, B. and B trucked their backhoe from a job site early the
following morning to dig a grave under her favorite patch of zoysia
grass.  We laid her to rest with her blanket, her halter and lead-rope,
and the few dollars in coins my family and I had accumulated from the
roadside during the previous year-and-a-half's worth of pony walks.

I backfilled the grave by hand.

On the advice of good friends, I immediately bought another pony from
the same horse trader.  At first I was outraged by their suggestion,
feeling it would be disloyal to Cherry's memory.  These good friends
showed me that, instead, it would be a tribute to her, an
acknowledgment that she had been so important to me that I didn't want
to be without a horse in my life.  Their advice proved sound.

During the process of backfilling the grave by hand, the Sheisskopfs
(they, unfortunately, are painfully real, but with a different name)
did their level best to make my life even more miserable by harassing
me.

The job took five days due to inclement weather.  During that period
those neighbors filed a stream of complaints starting with the city
police, Claiming that the job was not being done quickly enough, that
flies and bad odors came from the grave.  With every complaint to
successively higher levels of authority, I was visited by poce,
sheriffs deputies, and county health agents-all of whom came, looked,
sniffed, and pronounced my progress satisfactory, with no nuisance or
health hazard evident.

When Linda Sheisskopf got no satisfaction from local governments, she
called the governor to complain.  This resulted in a visit from the
state veterinarian, who was furious over the waste of his time.

The Sheisskopfs are still raising several varieties of merry hell in
that neighborhood, accusing people (seemingly at random) of various
nefarious deeds and plots against them.  Local police are mildly
astonished that someone hasn't killed them yet.  Several neighbors are
mildly astonished that the police haven't killed them yet.

Mrs. Windward has retired from selling home beauty products, but is
quite active and healthy for her age, an attractive, well-groomed,
alert, and intelligent woman.

Frank Buntz, pretty honest as horse traders go, still sells ponies from
his yard.  Advancing adult-onset diabetes is slowing him down these
days.

Rev.  and Mrs. Falabella moved a couple of hundred miles north after
his stroke to be closer to their daughters, she in a retirement
apartment, he in a nearby nursing home.  My father died of congestive
heart failure on Diana's tenth birthday in 1990, two years after his
stroke.

I miss him very much.  My mother is active in church groups and is
writing articles for Christian magazines.  She accepts her son's
differences stoically, if not always comfortably.  We love and
understand each other much better now.

My new mare was considerably older than Cherry, and certainly no
pushover.  Yet with patience, kindness, and a gentle touch, she
accepted me.

When I first saw her in Frank Buntzs pen, white dapples gleaming
against her chocolate coat, Dottie was beautiful.  This was the
afternoon of the day Cherry died, and I was still somewhat in shock.

Vet bills had eaten up what cash I had on hand, but Frank agreed to
take a pony cart and leather harness in trade, including delivery.

Not knowing at the time what had actually killed Cherry, I proceeded to
thoroughly clean and disinfect the pen, stable, and food and water
containers before Dottie was delivered.

At first, Dottie was wary of even being touched near her tail.

saddle and harness-broken, I decided to just work and relate with her
as human and horse until we got used to each other.  Since the
small-town fall festival was coming up, I called a farrier to put
horseshoes on her so we could sell kiddie rides to benefit the Senior
Citizens'Center.  Evidently shoes were a new experience.  The front two
went on with only a puzzled look in Dottie's eyes, but the first hind
shoe produced whinnies, foot tugs, and dancing around the tree.  When
the last nail finally went into the last shoe, I was on my back, Dottie
was lying across my chest as I held her in a headlock, and the horse
shoer was laughing so hard he could hardly hit the nail.

The rides went quite well, though.  Although not very sociable at the
time, Dottie got right down to business as soon as a saddle went on her
back.  We raised almost fifty dollars, selling two-block rides for
fifty cents apiece.  We were tired (I had to walk her a mile and half
to and from the show since I didn't have a trailer, and I hand-led her
for each ride), but I have good memories of children's smiling faces.

Many doting grandparents took pictures of their little dears on their
first pony ride.  We followed that a month later at the school
carnival, raising almost as much money for playground equipment.

The first snowfall of the winter on Thanksgiving found Dottie and me
out in the streets with two sleds tied behind her.  After a couple of
freezing hours filled with delighted children, we went into my service
shop to warm up, just Dottie and I. We had been working on trust and
she had come to enjoy my gentle fondling under her tail.

After I combed the snow and ice out of her coat and picked her hooves
clean, we stood before the kerosene heater on the concrete floor and
made love for the first time.  I knew then with certainty that while
I'd miss Cherry very much and always regret her death, life could and
would go on.

We moved out of my home of eight years the next spring to a rental
house with a barn and plenty of pasture, leaving wife and children
behind.  We are very much in love, and I consider her to be my spouse
in fact, if not in law.  We celebrate our anniversary with friends,
cake, beer, and soft drinks.

Many of our close friends know the true nature of our relationship.

Some seem puzzled at their own reactions, claiming, 'The general idea
of sex with an animal is repugnant, but with James and Dottie it just
seems normal and right."

200 Sheila and I were divorced in the spring of 1990 with no fighting
or dissension; we agreed that we simply weren't compatible enough to
live together.  Although I know for a fact (since she has read parts of
this manuscript) that Sheila understands our situation, we generally
politely ignore the subject by unspoken agreement.  We get along quite
well on a "just friends" basis, and I saw my children often until
recently, when Sheila and the kids moved a few hours away (with my
consent) to improve her career potential.

Diana and Douglas love their "stepmom."

Dottie and I signed up for the ten-mile Mother's March of Dimes
WalkAmerica in the spring of 1990.  (More people pledged money for my
little horse than for me!) The day before, I bought new walking
shoes.

I went to the barn that afternoon to feed Dottie and, while climbing
over a solid oak gate to get to the hayloft ladder, my right foot
slipped and I landed astride the gate.  Although I expected to feel the
worst pain of my life at any second, I missed landing on my testicles
and felt little discomfort at the time.  It took about a week for the
internal injuries to manifest as a massive, infected abcess in the
groin.  It destroyed enough blood vessels and nerves to remove all
sexual function: No erections, no orgasms, no ejaculation.  Six months
later I received a prosthetic inflatable penile implant, and can now
literally maintain an erection for days.  However, I still have no
orgasms, no ejaculation, and virtually no sensation in the penis.

I was dismayed when I got to try out "the pump" for the first time.

Since Dottie seemed to like it, I continued.  In the time after the
surgery I have learned that sex and love don't always require orgasms
to be satisfying.  Just being close, being coupled, touching,
smooching, trading caresses with lips, tongue, and hands can be
wonderful.  Sitting in my easy chair in the living room with two cats
in my lap and Dottie standing alongside (she's naturally housebroken),
watching television or listening to music, I feel a warmth and
companionship that I can trust.

No games, no power plays, just honest affection.

Sure, I realize that I'm "limiting" myself, dodging 'the fullness of
the human experience."  However, that seems at this time to be an
unreachable goal, fraught with pain, betrayal, peril.  Today I am able
to relate sympathetically to women, with no sexual interest interfering
with my perceptions of them as human beings.  "Better half a loaf than
no bread."

Nor do I think Dottie is somehow "human."  She is a horse.  She acts
and reacts as a horse in most matters.  She really appreciates a good
shoulder rub or a tasty treat.  She is more interested in sex while in
oestrus, but she enjoys it any time.  She has, however, learned the
human pleasure of kissing, sometimes indulging for minutes at a time.

(Her breath is sweet and clean.) I relate to her on an equine level.

I made my choice with eyes wide open, and don't let fantasy run away
with me.  all in all, I feel I am a better person for my choice than I
was before, able to appreciate people as people rather than as sex
objects or rivals.

Cherry taught me I could, after everything that had happened in my
life, love.  Dottie has taught me how much I could love.

As our fourth anniversary nears, I find myself more and more in love
with Dottie, and she seems to return the love in fun measure.

She is now sixteen years old, and "Sweet Sixteen" seems to fit
perfectly.

Her coat is in fine condition, she shows no signs of founder or other
foot trouble, and her joints are all in excellent shape.

We now live out in the country with few close neighbors, and those that
are near know and accept us as a couple.

AFTERWORD When I first had a sexual experience with an animal, I liked
it.

This disturbed me, so, given my scholastic tendencies, I attempted to
research the topic.

There was little bonafide literature available, usually only a few
paragraphs or pages buried in massive tomes.  Kinsey's famous project,
which resulted in Sexual Response in the Human Male, touched on the
subject, mostly yielding dry statistics.  According to those results,
most men who have had an 'animal contact" did so in early adolescence
and repeated the experience only a few times, stopping as they entered
the later teenage years; almost none of them continued into
adulthood.

Interestingly enough, the greater the level of education, the older the
age when animal contacts cease.  This correlates with my experience and
that of other zoophiles with whom I am in contact.

While still in high school and college, about the only books I could
find dedicated exclusively to zoophilia were phony psychological
studies actually designed to sell titillating stories under the guise
of case histories.

These books tended to preach a little, referring to many of the "zoos"
as ill-educated or morally reprehensible sociopaths who would merrily
couple with anything close to blood temperature.  Inevitably, the zoos
were portrayed as people in desperate need of help and pity.

Who was I to argue with 'authority?  Within weeks of freshman
university enrollment I availed myself of the student health services
and consulted a psychologist.  Unlike later counselors, both those
professionally engaged and social friends, this graduate student simply
had no idea what to do with me.  As my 'treatment" proceeded, I became
further and further confused, convinced that I must be some sort of
cosmic screw-up, human garbage.  I became a recluse, seldom leaving my
residence hall except to work a student job in the computation center
or to browse the enormous library.  I attempted suicide once, taking a
whole bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills.

Fortunately, my knowledge of pharmacology at the time was quite
inadequate.  I awoke a day later, still in my own bed, with no other
effect than a raging headache.

Another time, during a weekend at home, I stared for a long hour down
the barrel of a loaded shotgun, thumb on the trigger, mentally flipping
a coin to decide whether or not to press it.  I got better when I
finally quit going to counseling and realized what a crock of garbage I
had been handed.  No, I was still not very well adjusted, but the
cynical attitude I adopted armored me to some extent.

Some psychological professionals feel that almost all paraphilias have
not only causative roots in childhood, but begin to manifest themselves
then.  This was not the case with me.

Through many hours of conversation with friends in the counseling
field, friends fully familiar with me and my mate, we have agreed that
my becoming a zoophile was a matter of the coincidence of my fast
encounter with and manual exploration of that old pony mare in the barn
at age sixteen.  While it's obvious that previous traumatic experiences
were probably setting me up for some kind of sexual or social trouble
down the road, the thought of sex with an animal really hadn occurred
to me before that time.

My father and I were skilled hypnotists, so we held some
hypnoregression sessions that revealed no fantasies about or sexual
obsession with horses or other animals before my first exploratory
experience.

Talking it out with those people whose business it is to know, we have
all reached the conclusion that I was, in a way, incredibly lucky.

Without such an outlet for my frustration, an ameliorative for my
growing anger with and distrust of womankind, I could easily have taken
an irretrievably negative turn.  Misogynist, rapist, wife-beater,
perhaps even child molester -any or all of these might have resulted
from my genera&W mistrust and a desire to regain control over a runaway
life.  I'm really not sure they would have in my case, because my basic
nature is passive-aggressive rather than active-aggressive, but who can
know for certain?

At the time I began writing this book, Dottie and I had already moved
into housing away from my human family, living with three other men in
a large house.  I was happy with Dottie, yet I still felt a lack in my
life.  Was I the only person who loved his animal mate, or was I a
member of a very tiny minority.?  How would I find out?

Books were one thing, but their information was intangible.

I searched for someone, a support group that might help, both via
telephone and mail.  Writing to such people as "Dear Abby" was a waste
of time, since I received no reply, although I enclosed a
selfaddressed, stamped envelope as requested, and I tried her three
times.

The 'Playboy Advisor" was much more helpful.  Even though they had no
knowledge of a support group for zoophiles, the staff there managed to
refer me to other groups who suggested I contact Dr. John Money at
Johns Hopkins University Teaching Hospital.  Dr. Money told me that,
as best he could determine, there was no such support group available,
but he opened the channel to the publisher of this book.

I didn't fully understand my background and motivations until the .

process of writing them down forced me to organize my memories and
feelings.  As I did so, I realized more and more that my life might
have been much different had there been a place for me to talk to
others who preferred the warmth, loyalty, and love of an animal to the
head ships.  Were there others out there like me, suffering a lonely
life, perhaps wondering if they were insane?  I had come to terms with
my paraphilia, but how many others who felt like me were able to do so
on their own?

In the summer of 1991 I discovered several electronic bulletin board
systems dedicated to the subject of zoophilia that I could call with my
computer.  This was a joyous revelation as I discovered, on a
person-to-person basis, that there were indeed others who knew exactly
what I had experienced and shared my feelings.  This was great for me,
but not all zoophiles have computers and modems, nor know where to call
if they do have them.  Something more needed to be done.

The cry of "someone should do something" is often heard in our land,
but nothing happens until someone does.  Given my unusual
circumstances-of being independently employed in a ted field where
people have little choice but to call on me for certain services, and
being seni-public about my situation, among other things-I carefully
weighed my options and their costs.  Since my human family has moved
away from the area, I no longer needed to worry about them being hurt
by my activities.

Beg in January 1992, with the cooperation of some friends (both local
and electronic), I founded Z.O.O the Zoophiliac Outreach
Organization.

ZOO offers nonprofessional peer-group advice and mutual support.  There
are no dues or fees, since the people involved consider this a
"pay-forward" effort.

Many of the long-term zoophiles I have contact with had a different
background from mine-their obsessions with animals began very young,
and some of them have never expressed interest in a human
relationship.

Some zoophiles feel that their "true spirits" are animal, and that
their human bodies are inappropriate.  They are most comfortable when
among others of their "true species," whether horses, dogs, wolves, or
dolphins-these are the species involved with the zoophiles I know.

Those in this group, in my amateur opinion, are somewhat similar to
transsexuals who feel that their genitals do not match their
personality genders.

Some people have coined the term "species dysphoria" to describe this
particular situation.

Let me point out that these various zoophiles are all functional
members of society.  They are independent business people, artists,
students, salespeople, welders, executives, technicians, engineers,
even a psychologist.  They are people like you except in their sexual
alignment.

A few doctors here and there suggest that we need a "cure" for our
inclinations.  By contrast, few suggest trying to "cure" homosexuality
philias-since homosexuality is no longer officially considered a
psychological problem.  If gay or lesbian people seek counseling today,
it is likely to be for help in coping with a world where they still
encounter hostility and rejection.  Trying to "cure" homosexuality has
usually proved futile and often damaging.

The doctors who have suggested trying to cure zoophilia are often doing
so from the standpoint of helping a person in trouble with the law
because of his or her sexual practices.  It may well be that a zoophile
convicted under archaic "sodomy"laws will have to agree to
psychological treatment as a condition of not receiving a prison
term.

In those cases, some doctors think that drug therapy might be
indicated, suggesting lithium or Depo-Provera to reduce the sex drive
so that a person may control what is viewed as a compulsion.

I would rather see the medical community offer these people assistance
toward self-acceptance and better methods of interfacing with a society
that rarely understands their problems.

In my opinion, chemical cures treat zoophilia as a mere sexual outlet,
ignoring its emotional component.

I feel no personal need for a "cure," especially something as radical
as Depo-Provera, sometimes referred to as "chemical castration."

Lithium may be a wonderful drug for bipolar syndrome (manic-depressive)
people, but I am leery of its side effects.  I have had quite enough
experience with mind-altering drugs, thank you.

And why should I want to change.  To conform to "social norms"?

I needn't fear arrest or prosecution for my proclivities in this state
as long as I don't harm my partner or become a public nuisance through
exhibitionism or like behavior.

I can and do communicate much more -honestly with my family now, and
have good, warm relationships with a much wider variety of people
(including women-they are now friends instead of prizes or adversaries)
than before.  With self-acceptance came a lessening of the pressure to
conform, which led me to honest evaluation of my life goals.  I no
longer worry so much about the outward signs of success or status.  I
do what I find necessary or pleasing, rather than depend on others to
define these things for me.  I now sleep well at night, free from most
of the stress that many people must endure.  I live my life and allow
others to live theirs.

I realize that, as professionals, doctors must try to maintain a
neutral point of view, but I don't see my situation quite as negatively
as some seem to.  Once I accepted my nature, I could adjust to it.

From my viewpoint, the improvement is so radical that I am quite
satisfied and feel that any attempt to suddenly reverse course might
well prove disastrous.  After all, sexuality is only a part-albeit a
significant part of most people's lives, including my own.

This, I think, is an important point.  Zoophiles are not "normal" by
most accepted definitions.  I am not "normal."  But we are human
beings, sharing most of the characteristics of the rest of humanity.

As such, rather than forcing us into chemical treatment, or imprisoning
us, or casting us out, perhaps it is time for society to take a closer
look at its attitudes toward us.  As long as we don't harm or hurt any
people or our partners, as long as we are still productive, functional
members of society, why, then, the opprobrium?

Why not let us be?

Is society harmed by diversity or enriched?  Please think about it.

Life still has its normal difficulties and challenges, its trials and
triumphs, but that's okay with James.  He and Dottie face them
together.  Don't feel sorry for James, for his troubles, for his
differences.  Feel happy for him-for finding himself-and for, at long
last, finding love.

I am James.  I am happy.