I'm not going to hide the fact that this little blog brings in a few bucks. In fact, I'll tell you it's only about $200 a month or a little less, which is enough to support all my bad habits and help me feel rewarded for the huge amount of time this blog requires (have you noticed: I write about two full short-story length posts a month?).

I have set up a great little "members area" with about 15 minutes of me masturbating (let's call it "Jill Jacks Off") plus more than 1000 photos of me, a good deal of them showing all of the parts you are probably lusting after. Just to be clear, that means absolutely and totally nude and exposed (yeah, the "swimsuit area"...all of it).

Here is a sample clip to give you a bit of a preview of the image quality, which I admit isn't up to Larry Flynt's standards, but should be more than good enough for day-to-day wanking. While I have my panties on in this clip, most of the time in the videos I do not and am working hard to entertain you, first by hand, then with a good-sized toy. Seeing it all will cost you $9.95 (collected and administered by CCBill, a reputable American billing company). This small sum gives you access whenever you want for 365 days, meaning there's no need for you to feel hurried.

Want to see it all? Just click here.

Because this is a spare-time thing for me, and I do need time to write, I can't reply to every single e-mail I get. However, I do reply to several every day.

What not to expect: If you write and get a reply, don't bother writing again. I actively discourage stalking or people trying to drag me into cybersex. Thus, if I reply to you, you'll probably have to make do with that one reply. I realized one day that if I just added two correspondents a month, I'd have 24 correspondents in one year and nearly a hundred in four years, which ain't gonna happen.


Once again, I find myself apologizing for how long it is between posts. But you know I work for a company that supports other companies, especially in times of need, and lately it's just one disaster after another. First the Haiti earthquake, then the even more massive one in Chile, and now the oil spill. I'm on the front lines and have little time for sex and even less time to write.

So, I'll do what I typically do under these circumstances and reach down into the "moldy oldies" bin for a story I wrote a while ago that most of you probably haven't read, because this blog is so huge.

The last oldie I put up was "The Summer I Totally Lost My Virginity," which has a sequel story named "The Summer I Mostly Grew Up," so it only makes sense to put that up now.

NOTE: Well, it's one disaster after another, and my company gets very busy serving it's many clients at disaster time, and so I've been swamped. What I often do in situations like this is bring out an oldie-but-goodie which I assume many of you haven't read. Here's a story that takes you back to my high school days and, yes, it's got some pretty good sex in it. So...enjoy. — Jill

My Aunt Maggie lives on a Horse ranch in Northern Washington State, The High Cascades. The mountains in this area are higher and steeper, on average, than those in the Oregon or California Cascades.

Maggie is my mother's younger sister, and I worked for two summers on the same farm that employs Maggie. I say "employs," but since she is the live-in girlfriend of the ranch owner, Seth, she's a lot more like a wife in many ways than a mere employee or girlfriend. They're far beyond dating and seem so comfortable with each other that they may as well be married.

In those two summers, I learned more about my mother than I ever learned from my mother herself, just as I knew more about Maggie from my mom than Maggie ever told me about herself. I called Maggie my mother's "younger" sister, but their true age difference is less than two years, so by that time of life, they were practically contemporaries. A year and nine months difference in age is vast when you're under 10, or even an early teen, but put a few decades on and it's nothing at all.

The ranch specializes in Arabians, those large, muscular horses which probably exhibit the physical characteristics of horses more beautifully and in better balance than just about any other breed. They're fast, they're strong, they have unbelievable stamina. If you close your eyes and imagine a horse, it's likely to look an awful lot like an Arabian. Some people would call them The Ultimate Horse. Seth's ranch is best-known for black and palomino Arabians and he owns horses from several of the major bloodlines. He also has some minor bloodlines possessing characteristics he uses to improve his own lines and to minimize the risks of inbreeding. Breeding for specific characteristics without too much inbreeding (mating closely-related animals) is a tightrope every breeder has to walk, no matter what creature he's breeding, be it a horse, a fish, or a green bean.

Several times a month, a customer would arrive pulling a horse carrier with one or two magnificent Arabian mares inside and the attempt (usually successful) was made to bring their mare or mares together with one of our well-known studs for breeding. Of course, a lot of breeding is done without bringing a mare together with a stud, often to preserve the health of the stallion. A mare who isn't ready to be bred can kick the stud with dire results. Sometimes the owner of the mare is given fresh semen and the mare is inseminated separately from the stallion. Often, chilled or frozen semen is simply sent to the owner of the mare, so that neither horse has to be exposed to the dangers of transport.

A lot of breeders still prefer that things happen "the Old Fashioned way," and so I watched horses fuck many a time.

My own sexuality was burgeoning at that time, and the first summer I worked on the ranch I was technically a virgin. By that, I mean that my hymen was unbroken. I'd been humping my pillow for years and early boyfriends had brought me to orgasm by putting their hand in my crotch while we kissed. I believe, if I remember correctly, that I'd given a couple blow jobs by then as well, mostly to do something for a boy I'd brought to a state of white hotness. When sucking cock back then, I finishing the boys off by hand. I certainly hadn't taken a load in my mouth or been fucked in the ass. Two concepts which I'm sure would have appalled me before that summer.

I'll never forget the first time I jacked a horse off. Now, there are a variety of techniques for collecting semen from a stud horse, but sometimes the only (or best) way, for a variety of reasons, involves simply masturbating the horse into a jar.

Prior to visiting the ranch, my "experience" with horses consisted mostly of riding them, and in retrospect, most of that experience was with mares. Maybe I was in an asexual stage of life, but back then I didn't think much about horse penises. My room was full of My Little Pony goodies, unicorn statues, and other girlie-girl horsey things. At that time, a stallion was just a boy horse and beyond that I was mostly concerned with their beauty, not their sex lives.

Then boys started to occupy my thoughts more than horses, and I did start to think about cocks, but the cocks I thought about were attached to a boy, not a horse.

So, wouldn't you know, one of my first tasks the first day was to help Maggie jack off their top stud. I say "help," but in truth the jacking off was done mostly by me. I'm sure they wanted me to, so to speak, "jump in the deep end" and get past the shock.

"How do you do it?" I asked. "Surely you have some experience with boys," Maggie both stated and asked. "You've masturbated a boy, haven't you?" "Sure," I said, based on perhaps two or three faltering experiences, during which my confidence had been bruised by being told I was doing it too hard or not hard enough. Later on, I came to realize that feedback isn't criticism and is an essential part of good sex, but back then I was still sensitive about such things.

Seeing I was having a hard time getting off the dime, she instructed: "Stoke his cock, dear." And so I squatted down and started rubbing his penis. "Harder and more vigorously, Jill. He can hardly feel that." I grabbed it more firmly and yanked harder. Before I knew it, it started growing. I really mean growing in the sense of extending. When I started, only about three or four inches were protruding from the sheath it's in, but with stimulation, it extended rapidly (or so it seemed to me) until it was at least a yard long.

At first repulsed, my repulsion gradually turned to fascination. The tip of a horse cock widens considerably and looks rather like a cigarette tip that's been put out by being mashed into an ashtray. There is no real glans in the sense that a boy has one. I remember it had veins running down it at least as big around as my fingers, dividing and subdividing into ever smaller veins like the roots of some giant tree.

"It won't be getting any bigger" said Maggie with a hint of amusement in her voice. Obviously, she could read my mind. Or maybe she was just reliving her own first experiences with horse cocks.

She jumped in and showed me how to finish him off. We collected the semen, froze it, and then went out for a ride. I couldn't get horse cocks out of my mind, though, and riding that day was almost like masturbating. Which is exactly what I did when I finally could find an excuse to go to my room. I think I told them I need a nap before dinner, but I humped a pillow so fiercely it made my little teen pussy sore. Riding, as you might guess, was painful for several days.

My favorite activity that first year was riding out with Maggie into the mountains and camping out under the stars. We were usually camping at a fairly high elevation for Maggie liked to use the horses to climb. Even in otherwise warm weather, the nights get colder the higher you go. We always took a tent in case of foul weather, but seldom had to use it and mostly slept under the stars. Seth never came with us because someone needed to be there for the horses.

The first truly cold night my summer weight sleeping bag simply wasn't doing the job and I was miserable. Aunt Maggie apparently heard my teeth chattering and said "Come on, let's sleep together. Get out of that bag." As I stood up, shivering, my skinny teenybopper arms crossed tightly, she took my bag and unzipped it most of the way down, then she put it open side facing down inside her bag and we both climbed in, getting the benefit of both sleeping bags and combining our body heat. It was like sleeping under a super-thick quilt. She held me just like my mom would have and not only was I warm but I was comfortable in the truest sense of the word, both physically and psychologically. We only slept that way when it was very cold, but those were the nights I liked most and remember most fondly. (And no, despite what some of you are surely thinking, nothing weird happened between us.)

A couple times, we slept in an abandoned mining camp's bunk house. It had been refurbished and was mostly used in winter or when dangerously foul weather rolled in any other time of the year.

My riding skills returned to me that summer and actually improved drastically. I was riding spirited stallions at full gallop and had only fallen or been bucked off a horse four or five times, and only when pushing myself or the horse to extremes.

Seth had a nephew named Larry who came by for two weeks or so the end of that first summer. He was a fairly good-looking blond boy, scrawny much like I was (scrawnier, actually) and with shoulder-length hair that looked perfect no matter how unkempt it might be. He wasn't good at chores, or I should say he wasn't good at pitching in. He didn't do anything unless asked or told to, but then he'd do a creditable job. You just never felt he was part of the "team."

I'm not clear on his exact age, but I think he was about a year older, maybe two. Like a lot of the nicer teen guys, he was shy around girls. Pair this with the fact that he probably felt inferior to a truly manly guy like Seth and you can imagine how out of it he must have felt. Now I know I haven't described Seth yet, so here goes: if you imagine a long and lanky Marlboro Man in tight-fitting well-worn (and certainly not acid-washed) blue jeans you'll have an approximation. Oh, and you can subtract the cigarette from the Marlboro man image: he doesn't smoke and even hates the smell of tobacco. He was an older man to my mind, so I didn't think of him sexually. Besides, he was clearly Maggie's. Ethical to a fault, he would never have made a pass at me.

So, it was uncomfortable to have Larry around the first few days. I could tell that Seth in particular had had his fill of the boy and despite the fact that Larry had done precisely nothing to ingratiate himself to anyone, I had come to almost pity him for his awkwardness. I had fit in immediately, here already two or three days, he was still a stranger to us.

It was over a hearty ranch house steak dinner that Seth suggested I might take Larry camping. Larry looked around during the impending silence. I really wasn't too keen on the idea, but when I realized that if I said no, it would really be a disaster, I tried to look as enthusiastic as possible as I said, "Sure...sounds like fun. I'll take him up to the lake by the old mine." Larry only said, "Okay."

Maggie smiled and winked at Seth. Suddenly I knew what it was really about: She and Seth needed some alone time. The ranch house was not very large: three bedrooms, two baths, and one "everything room," and all three bedrooms were near each other in the same short hallway with one thickness of wood between the rooms. You couldn't hump someone in there without the person in the next room listening in. I bet they hadn't fucked all summer long, unless it was on one of their rare trips into town for supplies. Maybe they pulled off the road somewhere for a quickie. Otherwise, I can't imagine when they could get their rocks off. I was near one or the other of them almost all the time.

I guess it didn't dawn on anyone to ask if Larry could ride. So, to everyone's surprise Larry asked how long a hike it'd be. Seth just stared at him. I think I covered my mouth to hide my shocked expression. It was Maggie who finally said, "Larry, this is a horse ranch. You do ride...don't you?"

"Uh...no," he said quietly and with ill-concealed embarrassment.

"I'll teach him the basics," I said. "There are still a few hours of sunlight."

So, I got out two of the better-behaved riding mares and taught him how to ride. He wasn't ready to handle a spirited stallion just yet, but to my surprise he learned quickly and finally showed some enthusiasm for something at the ranch. He seemed a bottomless pit of questions about horses, equipage and tack, and riding techniques.

The next morning, after the four of us devoured a large mound of scrambled eggs with home fries, bacon, and toast, we went out and loaded up two trusty trail-experienced horses. Maggie said that if anything happened, these horses knew the way back and would probably return, prompting a search and rescue.

Before we left the ranch, Maggie and Seth got very parental with us, offering us caution after caution and giving me a portable radio to use in case of trouble. I quietly assured them I would stay on the main trail all the way and that they could be sure I'd return Larry in one piece.

We rode off. I took one last glance over my shoulder and saw Maggie and Seth walking back to the house. I also saw Seth firmly grasp Maggie's ass. She brushed his hand off, but not very convincingly. They stopped and kissed. I smiled.

It was still well before Noon, and as was often the case, a haze hid the Sun. We rode higher and higher as the trail gradually rose and, as before, Larry was full of questions, not just about horses but about the area, about the flowers and trees, about whether there were bears and cougars. (There were, of course, and we'd be taking precautions against the bears. Cougar attacks actually tend to happen more in areas where suburbs encroach on wild areas. Out here in the wilderness, cougars would be keeping a good distance from us. We'd could count ourselves lucky even to see one.)

Eventually, we were actually above the clouds, looking down into a valley blanketed in impenetrable mists. I looked at my watch after a while and saw it was a bit after Noon, so I proposed we stop for lunch. Larry agreed. Like most boys, even skinny ones, he had a bottomless appetite and never resisted any opportunity to consume food.

As I recall, Maggie had packed not sandwiches as I'd expected, but sliced ham, sliced Swiss cheese, and Ry-Krisp crackers, with crisp sweet apples for dessert.

Larry grew quiet as he ate, just taking in the wild surroundings. I realized all of a sudden that I really knew little about him. To break the silence, I started asking questions. It turned out he was from Minneapolis. His father, Seth's brother, had taken a different route from Seth. Where Seth had majored in animal husbandry, Larry's dad had gotten an MBA and become a stock broker. Larry lived in a downtown apartment and went to a private boys school.

His parents had broken up when he was about 10 and for some reason his father had gotten custody. He suspected it was because she abused pain medications. His father refused to talk about it. To me, coming from a home full of love, this all seemed very appalling and I felt I was coming to understand Larry and actually sympathize with him.

Then, as can happen in the mountains, the clouds—which had gotten thinner—were now virtually gone except for the occasional tuft, and we could see down into the valley far, far below. Larry, coming from a city set in a very flat part of the country, was almost overwhelmed. He'd seen mountain vistas in books, but he'd never been in one. Despite his father's wealth, he'd never really been far from Minneapolis before. It turned out that visiting Seth had been his idea, not his dad's. He didn't say so, but I suspected it was an act of desperate rebellion on his part.

In turn, he asked probing questions about me and my life, and it was clear he coveted my life. I had grown to like him, actually, and if I could have waved a magic wand at that moment, I would have made him my older brother.

We must have spent an hour there talking before we remounted our horses and pressed on. It was well past 5 p.m. before we reached the lake. It's a beautiful spot. I think Larry had been expecting a pond. This lake is a true lake, large enough to sail a boat on, though all we had available to us was a canoe put there by Seth and Maggie and a few of their friends. It was laying by the shore of the lake upside down, which is how you leave a canoe if you don't want it to collect water.

At various places on the lake, they had also put lockers for campers to leave food and other belongings where the bears couldn't reach them, for there are both black and grizzly bears in this area. Black bears are dangerous; grizzlies are unimaginably dangerous. A black bear can kill you in an instant. A grizzly can dismember you in the same amount of time.

Seth told a tale about the days of animal baiting in England. Typically, a lion was pitted against a tiger, or a pack of fighting dogs against a lion or tiger. Apparently, this one time a tiger was pitted against a grizzly and the grizzly killed the tiger almost instantly, practically decapitating it with one swipe of a huge paw. The crowd, at first awed, grew angry, for they had expected to see a fight.

Tourists and hobby campers like to camp on the edge of a river or lake, and that's what Larry was probably expecting, but as I explained to him, Maggie called such locations "Brother Bear's Pantry," and camping in such locations was an open invitation to a bear encounter, so we'd be camping a couple hundred yards away from the lake up in the woods where I knew there was a nice clearing. There, we'd be much more likely to see a deer than a bear.

Neither one of us was particularly hungry, so I proposed we tie up the horses and do a little canoeing before dinner. Larry agreed and soon we had righted the canoe, revealing the paddles and a pair of life vests, which I insisted we put on, though Larry made a show of not needing one. I, playing Mother Hen, made it clear we were not going out on the lake without wearing them. I felt I had to play Maggie's role in her stead, and she would certainly have made me wear a vest. Laughing and rolling his eyes, Larry donned his vest and soon we were out on the water.

The tables were now turned: Larry knew how to handle a canoe and taught me how to paddle. In the past, when I paddled a canoe, I had found them difficult to control. If you paddled on one side, it turned the canoe in the opposite direction, and the only way to correct that, I had thought, was to change sides and paddle on the other side. The result was a canoe that zig-zagged. Maggie was no more canoe-wise and so we tended to switch sides frequently, which wore us out rather quickly.

He taught me to paddle in a semicircular or U-shaped stroke that cancelled the tendency of the canoe to drift away from the paddling side. Between that and having the bow and stern paddlers paddle on opposite sides of the boat, a canoe could become quite controllable. These skills, he told me, he had learned when he and his private school buddies had gone on paddling trips near home. Minnesota and even moreso Wisconsin, are dotted with numerous lakes, large and small. Switching ends with me to let me steer the canoe, he also taught me how to be the sternsman, who does most of the steering in a canoe. Occasionally, the bow paddler has some duties other than straight-ahead paddling, but that's mostly when docking the canoe or when maneuvering in whitewater, he told me.

Larry was looking more manly to me now. Recently, I saw that funny Napoleon Dynamite movie where the actor announces that "Girls like guys with skills" (if that's not exactly what he said, consider it a paraphrase). While that's a ridiculous line in the movie, it's also true to some extent. We like guys who exude confidence and can handle themselves. The problem with Napoleon was not that women didn't appreciate his skills, it's that for most of the movie he really didn't have any. Larry really knew how to handle a canoe.

We fooled around in the canoe until maybe 7 p.m. when we both agreed that we were hungry. I knew what Maggie had packed for dinner: a nice flatiron steak. I knew because I had asked for it. Now, I had never heard of a flatiron steak before visiting Aunt Maggie. I've researched it since, and it's the most tender cut of meat cut from the part of a cow called the chuck. Chuck is not very tender when cooked like good steak meat. By contrast, though, the part which has come to be called the flatiron steak is quite tender when cooked rare, and besides being quite juicy and flavorful, is also probably the tenderest part of the cow besides the tenderloin when cooked properly. Not well known in the Eastern half of the country, it's become fairly popular in the West and is widely available in both restaurants and markets. A flatiron steak is, like the Chateaubriand, big enough for two.

Anyway, in addition to the steak, Maggie had also packed two large Idaho potatoes in foil and four ears of corn also wrapped in foil. I told Larry if he would get a fire going in the nearby barbecue pit, I would take care of getting everything cooked.

Luckily, previous campers had left enough unused firewood around that at least we didn't have to scavenge up wood for the fire. And Maggie had packed a cigarette lighter. We gathered up some dry grass and twigs as kindling and before long, Larry had a good fire going. After it died down a bit and I had some coals to work with, I started the potatoes, turning them frequently by rolling them around on the barbecue pit's grid. I let them cook for a good half hour, then I put the corn and steak on the grid, turning the corn frequently while letting the large steak brown, first on one side then on the other.

We had put a few cans of pop in the icy cold water to cool off and so soon we were eating steak, potatoes, and corn off plastic plates, while drinking cola.

Larry had become quite talkative and we talked quite a bit about music. He liked music and was quite fascinated by both my knowledge of music and the yarns I was spinning about musicians I had met in person or stories my father had told about musicians he knew or had met. He (Larry) particularly liked a juicy story I had heard my father tell about a party Miles Davis had attended. After a while someone asked "Where's Miles?" My father didn't say anything, but he knew that Miles had met a beautiful young college coed at the party and in fact was boning her under one of the buffet tables, hidden behind a white tablecloth. My father was apparently standing in the one place, due to the fact that the cloth didn't cover the end of the long table, where one could see under it and where, my dad said, he could quite clearly see the jazz legend's bare ass going in an unmistakable motion between this lovely girl's widely spread caucasian legs, giving both him (my dad) and her a memorable story. He made it clear, though, that this wouldn't be a major memory for Miles, who had women throwing themselves at him wherever he went. Having been on tour with Miles in Europe once, he knew this for a fact. Miles often had sex more than twice a day. He not only had "one night stands," he had stands in the mornings and afternoons as well.

I disagreed with Larry about a lot of things. His taste was different from mine. However, our disagreements were friendly and just led to spirited discussion.

The sun was getting low. I hadn't been mindful of the time, and looking across the lake I saw something that gave me chills. A grizzly. I pointed it out to Larry who fairly shat his pants and clearly was extremely uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping outdoors.

"Back by the mine," I told him, "there's a bunkhouse once used by the miners, but Maggie and Seth and their friends have fitted it out for sleeping. It's all fixed up inside and while it's mainly intended for use in winter or when the weather turns bad, it's secure. It has barred windows and very strong doors. It's bearproof." (Of course as I said this, in my mind I was saying to myself, "I hope.")

Larry was relieved, and to tell you the truth, seeing the bear had made me a lot less enthusiastic about sleeping outside as well. I would be quite happy to sleep indoors.

There was also a small barn next to the mine. One which could be closed at night so that the horses would be safe from the bear as well. We first got the horses safely into stalls and then trotted over to the bunkhouse. I had been shown where the key was hidden, but in the dark it took a few minutes to find it. Once inside, we unpacked our sleeping gear. It was getting quite dark. I found a couple kerosene lanterns and lit them. In this dim light, we saw that there was some cordwood next to the rough fireplace. There were also some old newspapers. Larry asked me if he could build a fire. I said it sounded like a good idea to me. I was feeling a bit chilled, actually, and the thought of a fire offered the prospect of some welcome warmth. Besides, it gave Larry something to do.

In no time, he had a good fire going. I had raided a closet and found a bunch of thick woolen blankets. I laid a few of them out on the floor in front of the fireplace and wrapped myself up in one to cover my back. The heat from the fireplace took care of the front of me and warmed my toes.

Larry laid down on his side in front of me, his head supported on the hand of his bent arm. We continued the conversation we'd been having about music.

I don't know if you remember when you were this young: I was about 16, he perhaps 17. How awkward things can be when you're attracted to someone. How long it can take to make a move. How unintentionally disastrous and damaging a botched response can be to one party or both. I was both wishing for and dreading a "move" on Larry's part.

After a long silence, he got up and sat next to me. I knew something was about to happen, but I didn't know what.

When it finally happened, I laughed. Instead of doing something, he said, "Jill, I'd like to kiss you. Can I kiss you?" This is when I laughed, but I immediately saw that he was crestfallen. It had taken a lot of courage on his part just to blurt that out, so I set about trying to undo the damage.

I took him by the hand and looked him in the eye and said, "Larry, don't ask a girl if you can kiss her. Just kiss her. She may kiss you back. She may push you away. She may even slap her in the face. But don't ask permission."

"Why?"

"It's hard to explain." In fact it was. As I said those words, I didn't actually have an answer in mind, so I spent a little while thinking about it while he waited patiently.

At last I said, "Well, the girl wants to feel desired. She wants the guy to be passionate. Yes, she wants to feel that she's so desirable that they guy can't control himself, that around her he's overcome with desire and passion."

After a momentary pause I asked, "Does that help?"

He never replied. To my surprise, he was all over me. I was flat on my back and I was being kissed like I'd never been kissed before. Part of me wanted to fight him off and slap him silly, but that part of me was overruled by a part of me I didn't recognize. Maybe it was the big horse cocks. Maybe it was the way Seth's jeans fit. Maybe it was just me coming of age, but I decided to go with the flow. As Larry kissed me, I kissed him back with equal passion, for his kisses were more passionate than any kisses I'd known before.

This wasn't fooling around because everyone else was doing it, Larry really wanted to fuck me, and that felt good!

Soon his hands had pulled my shirt out of my jeans and were undoing the buttons as we kissed. My own hands were all over his body, eventually finding their way to his belt, which after a few faltering moments I managed to open.

As he fondled my tiny "barely there" breasts, I found his cock. My hands knew what to do with a young man's cock, and I went to work as he kissed me. Then, something new happened. He had undone my own jeans and his hand had thrust down deep and was right on my vulva, massaging it in a most pleasurable way. This was the first time I'd let a guy put his hand under my panties, and because I had allowed this to happen, something new happened: two of his fingers slid deep into my vagina, causing a sharp pain.

I yelped. He stopped, pulling his fingers out and apologizing profusely.

"Did I hurt you?"

I reached down and felt myself, finding a little blood on my fingertips. "Well...yes...but no."

"What happened?"

"I just lost my 'virginity.' You broke my hymen. You popped my cherry."

"Oh..."

By this time, I was laughing. He was distressed, not knowing if he'd done something bad...and was I laughing at him?

I couldn't leave him out on a limb like that so I snuggled up to him, laying my head on his chest, and said "Don't worry about it. I'm not mad at you. It had to happen sooner or later. I always imagined it happening the first time I had sex, though."

I was actually quite happy. The thought of losing my virginity had been a bit stressful and full of foreboding. Now it had happened and as it turned out, it was no big deal, though it did hurt. And so I found myself bonding somewhat with the guy who'd taken it, even if he'd done it with his fingers and not his dick.

I actually felt like rewarding him, so I started massaging his cock and kissing his tummy. He relaxed and hardened considerably. I examined his pecker. It was beautiful. I still dream of it. Large, not huge. Uncut. It was the first uncut cock I'd ever seen. I enjoyed watching the tip pop in and out of its sheath as I jacked him off. It took my mind off the stinging in my vagina.

Larry had calmed down and was relaxed. Now, instead of watching his cock as I tugged on it, I laid my head down on his belly, closed my eyes, and was gently jerking it as I let my tongue slowly but constantly circle it's tip.

In time, I tasted his jizz on my tongue. So I took the tip entirely into my mouth and let him cum there until he was done when, with a slow motion of his hips, he pulled it out and gently stroked my hair as I swallowed his load.

We spent another half-hour or so just laying in front of the fireplace in each other's arms. I have seldom felt so comfortable and relaxed. When I remember it, in my mind it looks like a scene from a Playboy or Penthouse magazine. Those magazines often do fireplace scenes which look so warm and comfy (as well as sexy), and that's how I remember it.

This relaxed scene was interrupted by noises outside. We looked at each other and ran over to the window next to the front door. From there, we could clearly see the form in the moonlight of a huge grizzly bear trying mightily to get at the food in the locker several tens of yards away. We felt we were safe, but this put an end to any more eroticism that night. So, Larry and I climbed into one of the bunks and slept together snug and warm under doubled-up sleeping bags in the cabin which cooled off rapidly as the embers in the fireplace died.

When I woke up, Larry was already up and had retrieved the food from the food locker and was in the process of scrambling some eggs. It was probably the aroma of the bacon Maggie had packed that actually woke me up. Mixed with that was the aroma of the coffee Maggie had packed. Somehow, the inexpensive house brand percolated coffee they served at breakfast out in the wilds was more delicious than the $3 lattes to be had from the espresso shops back home.

He looked at me and said, "Breakfast is served!"

I was impressed and told him as much. "I have to take care of myself much of the time back home," he explained. "Usually, Dad is gone before I wake up and it's either make myself a good breakfast or grab a granola bar before I go to school. I do the granola bar thing often enough, but now and then it's nice to sit down to a good hot breakfast."

We had a quiet breakfast during which we engaged in small talk. It was comfortable small talk, which was very nice. No reference was was made to the lovemaking of the night before. None was necessary. That was behind us. We both knew it would probably happen again.

While he cleaned up, I got dressed and realized that I had neglected to call the ranch the night before. I had told Maggie I'd try to remember to do so, so it wasn't a promise, but even so I knew she would want to hear from me.

When I did get through to her, I apologized for not calling the night before and told her all was well.

"He's not being difficult?" she asked. "No, not at all. He's really opened up. He's having a great time."

Reading between the lines, she said, "All of a sudden, I'm wondering if it was very bright of us to send two teens out alone without a chaperone." I told her not to worry, that nothing had happened. (A bit of a lie, to be sure, but since she was probably mostly concerned that I not go home "in the family way," she really didn't need to worry. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, I reasoned.)

I told her about the bear, and suddenly that concerned her a lot more than her niece being boned out in the boonies. I assured her we were being more than careful.

"Okay," she said, sounding placated. "You'll notice that I gave you more than enough food for one day. I told her I had noticed that.

"If you're having a good time, stay another day," she said. I told her that sounded like a good idea and that we'd probably do that. If not, I'd call her to let her know. She indicated that was fine with her.

Of course, Larry was happy to spend another day at the lake and one less day doing chores at the ranch. And I was quite happy to spend another day with Larry.

We decided to go and explore the far end of the lake where, on a prior visit with Maggie, we'd spotted a split-rail fence at the top of a rise. We had planned on going back sometime to see what was up there. Now it turned out it would be Larry and me, not Maggie and me. After packing some food and storing the rest in one of the lockers, we went down to the canoe and shoved off.

And so we paddled out onto the lake, which as most mountain lakes are, is much longer than it is wide, being flanked on two sides by mountain slopes. In fact, almost all large mountain lakes are just mountain valleys filled with what water can't drain into a river.

Larry taught me considerably more about canoes and canoeing. I learned, for example, that while The Great Unwashed will prefer a flat-bottomed canoe, in fact the most stable canoes have round (or, more correctly, somewhat U-shaped) bottoms and possess low initial stability. Get out in waves of any size, however, and the round-bottomed boat settles into the churning water, tending to keep itself and he paddler more upright, whereas the flat-bottomed boat tends to lean this way and that because it conforms itself to the surface of the water, and if the water is at an angle due to a wave, the flat-bottomed boat tends to go along with it.

Since Maggie and Seth and their friends had supplied the camping/staging area with a rather round-bottomed boat, I gained a little respect for them. At first I had thought them nutty for choosing a canoe that felt so wobbly. Seth showed me, though, that this distressing wobbliness was pretty illusory. The boat may have wobbled, but it did not want to tip over. Even with the explanation, however, I was a bit edgy the first ten or fifteen minutes out. Even though I'd been out in the canoe before with Maggie, it was Larry who helped me feel safe and at home in it.

The Pacific Northwest, defined roughly as Northern California on up to Alaska, is still very wild. I know from my several trips to Portland that, according to the locals, it's still one of the few cities in the U.S. where mountain lions sometimes wander into town and mix it up with dogs, often with tragic results for both the dog and the lion, the latter ending up being shot by police who are sometimes forced to take lethal action before someone can arrive with tranquilizer darts. That simply doesn't happen in Northern Ohio, although from time to time coyotes are spotted in suburban and rural communities. At worst, a bobcat.

Did you know that the North American mountain lion may have been the most successful large predator in the world, with a range encompassing all of North American, basically, from Alaska and Northern Canada down into Mexico. In many areas, they've been hunted to extinction, which is kind of a shame. To me, they are the most beautiful of all the big cats.

Another odd fact about Mountain Lions (all of these facts by way of Larry, of course): they are the largest cat that can purr.

What I was starting to say was, along the (and after I got past constantly obsessing about the canoe tipping over) we saw tons of wildlife. A female deer with a fawn, a lone bull elk with a gigantic rack of antlers, several osprey, some red-tailed hawks, and a bald eagle. Much of the time, it was Larry who spotted these critters. He had a sharp eye and knew lots of odd facts about most of the species he identified.

As well-informed as he was about animals, he was almost totally lacking in knowledge about plants. I even had to tell him that not all of the evergreen trees around us were pines, and that in fact the bulk of the trees were in fact Douglas firs and cedars. He didn't know that Douglas firs were the #1 wood producer in the Pacific Northwest or that cedar wood tends to be in various shades of orange, not yellow like most other woods. (God, had he never seen a "cedar chest"?)

I chimed in when I knew a fact he apparently did not, or when something he said wasn't exactly correct, but mostly I listened. This Larry was so different from the Larry who first appeared at the ranch. He was outgoing and interesting and funny, and boy, do we girls like a guy who can make us laugh.

I don't watch afternoon ladies' talk shows like Oprah as a rule. Not even back then, but from time to time I end up at someone's place while one is on, for example, and I end up watching a bit of it. I do remember seeing one show which was about "Knockout gals with average-looking guys." What attracted you to this guy instead of any of the hunkier guys I'm sure you attract?" In just about every case, the reply was "He makes me laugh."

What with stopping from time to time to rest or watch some wildlife, it took about an hour and a half to reach the far end of the lake. Sure enough, there was the split-rail fence up the hill that Maggie and I had seen on a prior excursion.

There was also a very new-looking pier, and at the shore end of the pier was a rack that could hold four canoes, although it held only one. We pulled our own canoe up onto the gravel next to the pier.

"Let's grab our packs and walk around a bit," I said. "I'm up for a hike," said Larry. We donned our packs, turned the canoe over onto the paddles, and headed up the path that opened up behind the pier.

The hill was steep and so whoever had made the trail built it in the switchback style, so, to go up maybe 100 feet took about 500 feet of walking, but we eventually did find ourselves at the top and at a gap in the fence. This told us that the fence was decorative and not particularly designed to hold animals in.

It was easy to tell that at one time this area had been clearcut. There were stumps everywhere. However, they weren't new stumps. Between their dark discoloration and the fact that moss and other plants had found a home on or in them, it was clear they were decades old.

We kept walking up the hill. The higher we got, the more clearcut we saw, and just as old.

Finally, we reached the top and there everything changed. Suddenly, we were on the verge of the grounds of some large house with a manicured lawn and professional landscaping.

The house had a verandah, and in the distance we could see someone beckoning us toward them by alternately waving their arms to get our attention and then just gesturing us in their direction. We looked at each other and quickly decided to investigate.

As we got closer, I saw that someone else was sitting in a deck chair. Still closer, it became clear that there were two kids about our age, but in reverse in both age and sex. She looked just a bit older than her brother.

Under his breath, Larry muttered "Preppies." "Preppies," I repeated. I guess he knew. He was the one who went to a private school, though he didn't seem very prep school to me.

The girl, a honey blonde with a deep tan stood there in a white tennis skirt and deck shoes. She had on a heavy wool sweater. In this part of the country, and at this sort of elevation, if it's going to warm up at all, it typically happens after noon, and sometimes well after noon.

Even back then I was pretty severely bisexual, and a pretty girl turned me on just as much as a great-looking, studly guy. Her legs were just fantastic. Long and shapely and the skin was flawless.

Her face was very cute. I find that there are two kinds of cute: One is babyface cute: roundish features, proportionally large eyes...that sort of thing. The other kind of cute is the pretty person with the endearing flaw: the gap in the front teeth, for example. In her case, her endearing flaw was a slightly crooked smile.

As we got closer, she was kind of bouncing up and down off her heels, which just made her fabulous calves look even better. I'm guessing from her bounce that she had done some cheerleading that had really been formative. I knew, because I had been on the Spirit Squad the previous term in high school.

Her brother, though younger, made something of a show of acting more controlled and mature than his sister as he stood up from his chair, just watching us approach.

Larry laughed under his breath and said, "If her name is Buffy and his Skip I'll croak."

The "Buffy" figure more or less pogoed down the short flight of steps from the verandah to the lawn and said, "Hi, I'm Pepper." I looked at Larry and got a look that clearly implied "Not Buffy, but just as preppy."

We introduced ourselves and followed her enthusiastic lead up the steps to where her brother was waiting. He was wearing white slacks with white leather loafers and argyle socks in pastel browns. His sweater was very similar to hers.

"Corky," she said to her brother, "I want you to meet Larry and Jill." "Corky?" repeated Larry, to his credit without irony or sarcasm, for I knew that Corky is every bit as preppy as Skip, if not moreso.

Corky shook our hands with a surprisingly (and perhaps studiedly) firm grip and said "Pleased to meet" to each of us in turn. When done, I noticed that he wiped his hand inside his pocket.

"So, what brings you here?" she asked. I explained that we had been camping and canoeing and were curious about the fence and what was up here.

Pepper explained that this was one of their dad's houses. It turned out he's one of the ones who made big money off the big electronics boom of the 90's. His name, while perhaps not exactly a household word, would be if you were heavily into stock investments and read Forbes and The Wall Street Journal religiously, or traded heavily in stocks. He had made many people rich, not the least of whom himself.

"Would you like something to eat?" Pepper asked. We were hungry and it was about time for lunch anyway, so we agreed. "Umm... Shoes off first," said Corky. Pepper looked at our scruffy hiking boots and said, "Oh yes, shoes off."

When we entered the house, which on the outside looked like a very large plains farm home with a verandah all around, on the inside was considerably more modern. It was impossible to tell at first if the floors were some dark hardwood or a very cunning synthetic floor material. Unable to find any repeating patterns, and also due to the sounds our feet made as we walked on it, I determined it was indeed wood.

On the walls were paintings all of a modern bent. By "modern," I mean 20th Century ugly art. There was some late impressionism, but there was more expressionism. I thought I saw an original George Grosz. I looked at it closely: It wasn't a printed simulation (which can sometimes be initially quite convincing). It was done by a painter, so even if it was a copy, it'd be a very expensive copy.

Observing my interest, Pepper said, with a smile, "It's real. Daddy wouldn't have a fake. And besides, he can afford originals of just about anything."

"Is he around somewhere?" asked Larry. "No," said Corky. He's on a 'round the world cruise with his girlfriend. Pepper chimed in with, "We were invited, but Chandee is so..." "Tiresome," said Corky, finishing her sentence, adding "So we decided to stay behind." Pepper jumped back in: "So he plopped us here where we couldn't get into trouble." They both smiled at that.

By then, we were in a huge kitchen with not one but two islands, one topped with wood and one topped with stone.

Pepper flung open cupboards exposing canned goods of all kinds from soups both familiar and obscure to canned tuna and sardines to has, beef stew, baked beans, and so on. Meanwhile, Corky had pulled a large foil-covered object out of the capacious fridge. It turned out to be half of one of those sugar-encrusted hams. Another foil object turned out to be a hunk of roast beef. These were followed by cold cuts galore. Everything from mortadella (the original Italian version of what we have come to call bologna) to real Swiss cheese (by which I mean cheese from Switzerland, not Swiss-style cheese as most of us know it).

Pepper had gone to another fridge and was retrieving condiments and such sides as cole slaw, a half dozen sorts of pickles, and a big head of lettuce still in its shrinkwrap. After getting three or four loaves of artisan bread out and showing us where we could find the plates, silverware, knives, and so on, Pepper and Corky took the lead, making selections and building lunch for themselves.

Once everyone had a plateful, we were led to what I gather was a family room of sorts, which had the best sound system I'd ever seen by that time in my life as well as the largest screen I'd ever seen on a TV. It was a flat screen TV, probably LCD. Screens of that type and size were not common at that time.

"Music?" Pepper asked. "Sure," I said, speaking for both myself and Larry. "What have you got?" "What haven't we got is more like it," said Corky. "I like jazz," I said. This got Corky's attention. "What kind?" "Oh...the classic stuff from the 30's through the fifties, mostly," I replied. His interest turned to delight, and soon we were listening to a mix of Coltrane, Modern Jazz Quartet, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk, among others.

Mostly we listened, not talking much. After a while, Pepper asked, "Anybody like swing?" "I do," I said. "Cool!" Soon we were listening to some fabulous swing music, some of it old and some new. A few songs in, Pepper got up and asked her brother if he'd dance. Obviously, he'd done it before, but I think he was hesitant to do it in front of another male.

"I'll dance," I said. "You know how?" she asked in seeming surprise. "Is it so amazing?" I asked. I had been taught to swing dance by one of our jazz musician visitors when I was an early teen. I doubt if the early inventors of swing music had intended for a 12 year old white girl to be dancing with a 50-ish heroin-addicted black man, but that was how and from whom I learned. I learned the swing moves the black people did.

So that's why I had a lot of swing lore to teach Pepper, who was actually quite good. So good, in fact, that even though I knew more, she could have become a professional dancer had she the desire. She had the body for it.

I'm not entirely sure when I discovered my bisexuality, but I do remember looking at her gorgeous legs as she danced, and wondering to myself what she might look like without benefit of even that tiny white skirt she was wearing, and the white panties she showed whenever she twirled.

The boys were looking a little embarrassed, and refused several invitations to join in, probably because we were giving them prodigious boners. I say "We," because it was Pepper who had the bare legs and was showing off her undies.

Not wanting to let Pepper be the sole center of attention, I complained that my hiking gear was constraining me, so I took off my rather loose-fitting camping pants and my flannel shirt until I was attired in nothing but my own snug undies and a jog bra (which I didn't even need, because I've never had large enough boobs to prove uncomfortable even on a pogo-stick).

Soon, Pepper and I were dancing again, and not only could I tell I was getting plenty of attention from the boys, now...I was also getting it from Pepper, who after a bit of dancing with the now much more sparsely-attired me said, "Great ass!" The boys agreed loudly.

That was when the day took its first blatantly sexual turn.

We danced until mid-afternoon when I suggested to Larry that if we were going to make it back to the ranch by dark, we had to leave very soon. He agreed, but Pepper said "Not so quick." She was looking out the window and we all walked over to see what she saw.

As anyone who's spent time in the mountains can affirm, changes in the weather can happen suprisingly quickly, not so much because the weather changes quickly, but because you can't see those changes coming. One moment it's sunny, next a dark cloud is coming over the ridge and in five minutes it's pouring down rain, which is exactly what happened.

An hour later, with rain still pouring down, I lamented that we'd never get back to the ranch before dark now. We could get back to the camp, but I didn't relish paddling several miles in cold mountain rain without so much as a parka to protect me, and I said so. Larry agreed.

"Don't worry," said Corky. "You can stay with us as long as you need." Pepper agreed.

"We'd better call Seth and Maggie, though," said Larry. Glumly, I admitted that I hadn't brought the radio with me, I also admitted how stupid that was. It was back in the bunk house.

Pepper laughed and said, "Don't worry about that." "Why, do you have a radio?" "Daddy has everything. If I wanted to talk to him right now, I could. And he's...where, Corky?" "I imagine his ship is anchored somewhere near Koh Samui right about now." A place I'd never heard of at the time. It's an island off the coast of Thailand.

It took a little while and a few calls around to learn how to contact Seth and Maggie, but at last I had Maggie on the line. After assuring her we were in no peril from the weather, I told her it'd be impossible to be home before dark and she said, not to worry, to just stay in the camp another night.

"Actually, we're in a house. Remember the fence up the hill at the far end of the lake. We're probably going to spend the night here." All of a sudden she became concerned. I explained the situation and allayed her concern some, but only some. Once again, I'm sure, she was worried she's be sending me back to mom and dad pregnant. I did my best to placate her and assure her I'd be a responsible girl, and finally she let me get off the phone. She was irritating when she was that way, but I understood: she was in loco parentis. My mom would have been equally annoying.

So, the huge TV came on. It was a satellite TV and there was seemingly no end to what we might watch from sports to Mexican soaps or British pro wrestling to hard-core porn. I let Larry ask for the porn. I was curious but was too shy to ask at the time. I didn't think it was something a girl would ask to see.

When Pepper asked, "What kind?" even Larry was taken aback. I think we were both naive enough at that age to think that porn was porn and that was that. No thought that there might be sub-categories.

Corky helped: "Straight? Gay? Solo girl? Solo guy? Two girls and a guy? Two guys and a girl? Group stuff?...How about anal? There making more and more anal porn now."

Pepper hugged herself as if she was cold and said, "There's some even wilder stuff..."

I was already agog. Wilder than what had just been described? I wasn't sure I wanted to even hear about it. Corky smiled slyly and asked, "Ever heard of fisting?" "Er...no." "It's when someone sticks their entire hand and sometimes even part of their arm all the way into a pussy or asshole." "Is that even possible?" I asked. Like most girls, I really couldn't even conceive of giving birth, though obviously Mother Nature helped you with that. Something as unnatural as fisting gave me shivers. Perhaps that explained the way Pepper appeared to have the chills.

"It doesn't stop there," Pepper added. "People having sex with dogs and horses."

Corky didn't wait to be asked, saying, "That's not on satellite. That's in my private stash." Soon he had produced a dozen or so VHS cassettes and we all sat back and watched. I was seeing stuff I'd never dreamed of, or had heard of as almost mythical or legendary, and yet here were people doing it. I remember one German fisting tape where the guy was fucking some middle aged women in the pussy. A second woman stuck her hand into the first woman's pussy and jacked the guy off. He finished in the second woman's mouth!

Even more shocking was the bestiality stuff. I saw beautiful girls sucking dogs off and being fucked by dogs in the pussy or ass. I saw women blowing horses and taking what must have been a pint or two of horse semen in the mouth. He also had Brazilian porn: beautiful college age girls shitting in each others' mouths. That's when I first learned the word 'scat.'

My pussy was lubricating furiously even though I hadn't touched it at all. Luckily, only Pepper noticed and said, "Jill and I need to powder our noses, don't we Jill?" I agreed, and so we trotted upstairs. "I'll lend you a pair of undies." "Thanks." "That stuff's pretty wild, isn't it?" "Yes," I replied, not knowing what I could add to that assessment. She showed me to a bathroom and left, saying she'd be right back.

By then, I had stepped out of my panties and Pepper had returned holding a pair close enough to the ones I'd been wearing. She didn't hand them to me, though, but instead set them down on the counter, took me in her arms, and planted big, wet tongue kiss on my mouth while simultaneously slipping her hand between my legs and sliding a finger right into my sopping wet pussy. Nobody, male or female, had ever been so brazenly bold with me. I felt a sharp pain and pushed her away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Not very bi, I guess. I misread the signals." I'm sure I blushed as I explained that I didn't mean to reject her. She had just hurt me since I'd only lost my virginity the night before and certain parts of me were still a bit sensitive.

"Oh my golly! You lost it yesterday. How precious. How absolutely cool! We must have a party." Suddenly, I realized that I really liked this girl. Her mannerisms were a bit strange, but I liked her. And I wanted her. So, this time I was the one who took the initiative and we spent a good five minutes kissing and groping, but she kept her fingers out of my pussy.

I didn't really want a party celebrating the loss of my virginity, especially since I'd lost it to an ignominious finger instead of a cock, but Pepper was obviously a force to be reckoned with, so I kept my mouth shut.

When we arrived back in the family room, she got the boys' attention and said, "I've just learned that Jill lost her virginity only yesterday. Both Pepper and Corky looked at Larry and gave him the opera house clap, a silent tapping of the fingertips of the right hand on the palm of the left.

Larry looked at me silently as if to ask how much detail I'd given out. (I suspect he was happy for them to think he'd fucked me, not so happy if they knew he'd done it with his fingers.) I did what I could with facial expressions to convey that our secret was safe and that they were probably imagining "The Stupp of the Century."

When I said Pepper was a force to be reckoned with, I wasn't kidding. She took absolute charge and set about creating a festival atmosphere. She had Corky and Larry go off to make some computer-generated wall posters and banners. She took me down to the basement where she rounded up balloons and pastel-colored fringed steamers and festive tablecloths along with party plates and napkins.

I followed her around, my arms gradually filling. When she saw I could hold no more, she grabbed a few more items and we headed back upstairs, depositing them on a long table in the house's large dining room which could easily seat more than 20, I'm sure; 25 if they were crowded a bit.

"How are you at cooking?" she asked in a serious voice, her hands on her hips. I laughed. "So, I have to cook for my own party? Actually, I'm pretty good." I was. My mom believed that even a girl destined for a lucrative career in business should still know how to do a roast, bake a cake, or make macaroni salad.

By this time, Pepper was making for the kitchen. When we arrived, she said "It's all yours. I'm very adept at microwavery and making coffee and I can do a scrambled egg. Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm a bit lost. So, you go to town and I'll be your helper. Make something good." The boys came back and she ordered them to decorate, so they disappeared and I went to work with Pepper's assistance.

The first thing I did was to do a quick inventory of what was at hand and available. The freezer was chock full of great stuff that'd never be defrosted in time: At least 10 beef roasts of various kinds, two turkeys and a half dozen chickens, pork chops might be quickly defrosted. Ditto for some ready-made hamburger patties. I noted them in case I found nothing else to work with.

In the fridges, the main things I found were the aforementioned ham and beef roast. Looking around more, I found everything I needed to make scalloped potatoes, an easy dish but a hearty one, too, and fit for a rainy evening. That plus some veggies and drinks would do for dinner. I found another smaller freezer with frozen baked goods, including some frozen pies and cakes. Also there were some brownies in a flat pan. I knew those would defrost within an hour or so, so that would be our dessert.

Pepper really didn't know much about cooking, for when I asked her to make about two cups of white sauce for the scalloped potatoes, she looked at me sheepishly. I told her how to make it and watched her every step of the way to make sure she didn't make a mistake. Meanwhile, I was dicing ham and slicing onion for the scalloped potatoes. That done, Pepper helped me peel and slice potatoes. She was a very good potato peeler, but not very quick, so I ended up doing about 3/4 of the potatoes.

While Pepper melted some butter and soaked some bread crumbs in it, I arranged the scalloped potatoes ingredients in a big oval roaster. I let Pepper sprinkle the crumbs over the mixture and popped it into the oven.

Next we set about preparing some green beans, which prompted a question. "Pepper, there's a lot of fresh food here that's almost certainly been here less than a week. Where does it come from?" "From the sky." I looked at her more intently to convey the idea that she really hadn't answered my question. So, she explained, "Daddy has stuff flown in about twice a week. Whatever we need or want. Within reason." "Within reason?" "I don't think Daddy would pay for a hooker for Corky. Not that he'd need to." "What do you mean by that?" "Never mind," was all she said and I dropped it, thinking perhaps it was just a joke that had fallen on its face.

"Oh (pause) my (pause) GOD!" Pepper exclaimed. "What with you guys arriving and the rain, I forgot: we're getting a shipment today. Oh, well, I'm not going out to get it in this weather. She'll just have to bring it up." Shrugging, she said, "Oh well, no big deal. She's done it it before." "She?" "Yes, Cass is a woman. She's a bush pilot who moved down from Alaska. She was up there doing nudie bar dancing and saved enough up for flying lessons. Then, she assisted a pilot by doing his milk runs for him while took on the more interesting and risky assignments. Eventually he died on one of his trips. Strangely, not a plane crash but an encounter with a Kodiak grizzly bear. He was killed within sight of his plane. Anyway, it turned out that he had no relatives he cared to will anything to. He had willed it all to her, and totally to her surprise. She ran his business for a couple more years, then sold it, keeping only one of his sea planes. Now she drops off provisions for a number of the more remote sites in Northern Washington."

Dinner was approaching readiness when Corky and Larry appeared, each with two bottles of champagne, which they quickly put into the fridge.

"Dinner ready soon?" asked Corky. "Another fifteen or twenty minutes, probably." "Well, guys, come on our and check out the decorations." They boys had done a bang up job. It looked like a wedding reception was about to be held, or the return of a soldier from years at war.

A knock at the door. Must be the pilot, I thought, so I quickly pulled on my pants and put my shirt back on, not bothering to tuck it in. Corky trotted over and let in a rather large figure in a big green plastic poncho with a hood. She had an expedition-size backpack on her back and was carrying what appeared to be two waterproof duffles as well. Pulling the hood back, I saw the face of a rather large woman with a bush of curly hair on her head and a big smile on her face. "How are you guys?" she asked as she dropped her load on the big rug inside the front door and hung her poncho up on the nearby coat rack. "I almost didn't come. Between the rain and the clouds and the dark, not the safest flying weather. But...I know these hills like the back of my hand, and I knew you guys would want your magazines. So, I just flow low enough to be able to pick out where I was and keep my bearings."

There she was, dressed like Paul Bunyan, a good six feet tall, her big mane of curls bouncing on her head, and a jolly grin on her face. All I could think of when I saw her was Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. Big and sexy in an almost manly way. A woman, bigger than life, with (I was starting to notice) a killer body. The shirt may have been baggy, but it couldn't hide the fact that she had quite a rack. Her tight-fitting jeans didn't hide much at all!

"Hey, stick round for dinner," said Corky. Looking around, Cass asked, "What's the occasion." I know I must have been blushing so much I might have glowed in the dark. Pointing to me, Pepper said, "She lost her virginity to that guy over there," and she pointed at Larry. Cass laughed. "Sounds like a cause for celebration, though some would say it's the guy who busted the cherry who should get the party, but I'm into it. Congrats to both of you!" Remembering her manners, Pepper introduced us to Cass.

Her muddy hiking shoes now off, Cass walked over to Pepper and me and said, "Well, girls. Need any help in the kitchen?" "Not really," I said. "We're just waiting for the main course to finish cooking. Maybe another five or ten minutes."

"Let's build a fire in the fireplace," suggested Corky. "Sounds like a plan," said Pepper. "We need wood," said Corky. "Well, let's get some, then," said Cass. With that, she and the two guys headed down a hallway to where, presumably, the firewood was stored. Cass was in the lead. Obviously, she knew her way around the place.

Pepper indicated that we'd better stow the stuff Cass had brought, and so we spent a few minutes stocking the pantry and loading stuff into the fridges and freezers.

I couldn't quite gauge Pepper's attitude toward Cass. A little jealousy, perhaps? Born of what? While she was trying her best to be cordial, she certainly wasn't going out of her way to be nice. I realized she and her brother spent vast amounts of time together. Was there a little incest going on? Given the raging hormones all teens have and the fact that they only had each other most of the time, perhaps their lust had gotten the better of them and they had given in to a forbidden temptation.

As I pulled the scalloped potatoes out of the oven, I finally could resist asking no longer. "You don't like Cass. Why? She seems nice enough." "It shows, huh? I should've known. Actually, I like Cass, I really do. It's just that she and Corky have this flirtatious thing going and I have nothing." "So there's no..." Shocked, she replied, "Heavens no! She could legally do me, but him: If Daddy found out she was doing him, he'd see she got sent to prison. And I'm sure she has no desire to spend fifteen years with a prison full of women, many of them mothers and many of them guilty of murder."

"No, she's as hetero as they come. A true worshipper at the altar of cock. I've tried with her. No response. No, I'm not jealous of her so much as jealous of Corky. He's got something going on. I'm sure that she's going to do him up good shortly after his 18th birthday and that I won't be invited. Until then, yeah, he gets most of the attention. She thinks she divides it evenly between us, but I can tell that she and he have a special bond."

She chuckled a bit and said, "I get lonely sometimes. We do. Honestly, there are times I'd like to ask him to fuck me." "Corky?" (I'm sure my eyes were like saucers.) Now she guffawed, "Don't worry. Never happen. For one thing, there's half a chance Corky would tell Daddy about it and I'd have to go into therapy or something. Anyway, what is is and can't be changed."

"What can't be changed?" It was Larry. "Nothing I said. Girl talk anyway. You're checking on the food?" (Do I know guys or do I know guys?) "It's ready now. I was just letting it cool a bit."

Dinner was well-received and the occasion for the party was pretty much not discussed, to my relief. After all, how could my petty deflowering compare with the many yarns Cass had to tell of her adventures first as a stripper and then as a bush pilot? Her stories went on all through dinner and dessert and beyond into coffee time. (Thank heavens one thing Pepper knew how to do was operate their espresso machine!)

Now and then, Cass or Corky would excuse herself or himself to attend to the fire, and so by the time we all cleaned up and did the dishes, which only took about 10 minutes because all five of us worked at it, the family room was comfortably warm.

Cass was the first in, and looking out a window she announced, "Snow!" "Snow?" the rest of us said in virtual unison. "It happens at this elevation even in the summer, I'm told. About once every five years. Don't worry: it won't last beyond morning. Temperatures are still too warm for it to last. We looked. It was indeed coming down, and coming down hard. Eerily, since it was a full moon night, we could see rather that the area around the house was covered. "I guess you're spending the night with us," said Pepper. Now she was actually trying to sound welcoming, perhaps due to having leveled with me.

Now it was Pepper and Corky and Larry with their school stories. I could tell that Larry, who at first seemed to feel contempt for the brother and sister, was now warming up to them, and in fact was feeling a bit of kinship with them, despite their differences in personal style. Cass just sat back and listened and laughed and threw in her often hilarious comments from time to time. Despite the fact she was the only full adult there, she never condescended or lorded over us. She felt like one of us, and I could see that Pepper had fully warmed up to her, too. Obviously, talking about the issue had done her some good.

Then, I had an idea. "Champagne, anyone?" "Yes!" was the universal reply. I looked at Larry who looked back and I tipped my head as if to indicate "Come with me." We got up and went to the kitchen. I showed him where the champagne flutes were and while he got five of those, I retrieved two of the bottles and set them on one of the islands with the intention of looking for some snacks, but before I knew it Larry had me in his arms and planted a nice little dry kiss on my forehead. I squeezed his buns and said, "I want you to do something for me...promise?" He looked at me suspiciously. "What?" "Pepper is very lonely, and in case you hadn't noticed, Cass and Corky have a little dance going. I know she feels left out. So..." "Make out with her? You're kidding." "No, I'm not!" and No, this isn't some kind of test, either. Face it, we're together over the summer then it's back to you have your life and I have mine. We're having fun but we're not riding off into the sunset together. You can't tell me she isn't attractive. God, she's a Playboy centerfold girl. And she's nice, too. But, oh, is she lonely."

"But I like you." "I like you, too. I'm not asking you not to like me. Tell you what..." "What?" "I'll make it fun for you." "How's that?" "You start making out with her, and I'll join in." "You're serious?" "Deadly. Let's go. By now they're wondering what's taking so long."

When we got back, Cass got a big laugh with, "We didn't lose our virginity again, did we, Jill?" I said, "Sorry, I was hunting around for some nibblies." Cass countered with "Did she find something to nibble on, Larry?" Everyone laughed, except Larry and me. He blushed and by now I was just smiling at these virginity jokes, just glad that I was finally past that worry.

We had champagne and all gradually gravitated toward the fireplace, which was huge. A grown person could almost stand up in it. It radiated a lot of heat. This time, I was the one regaling everyone with stories, mostly from my dad's career as a musician and manager. Stories about Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver and Bill Evans, Hubert Laws, "Tom" Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Mel Torme, and many others. My dad had so many, and I rarely heard the same story twice, at least not without some new details or wrinkles that made it even more interesting than before.

Looking at her watch, Cass said, "I need to get an early start. I've got to haul some groceries up to a camp on the edge of Glacier. (She meant Glacier National Park.) If I don't drop some food there pretty soon, those suckers'll starve." "Well," said Pepper. "You've stayed here before. You know where the guest room is."

Then Cass got up and kissed first Corky, then Larry, then probably in recognition of her softening attitude, she gave Pepper a very nice kiss as well. When she came to me, it may have looked like she kissed me on my cheek, but in fact she whispered so softly I could barely hear it myself, "Your Aunt Maggie says hi." I stiffened, which is probably why she quickly added, "Hey, I'm no stoolie!" She gave me a squeeze on the shoulder that felt eerily like Maggie's and trotted upstairs.

I didn't know whether to laugh at my aunt or be pissed off at her. I didn't know if she didn't trust me or just cared about me. Now, looking back with a few more years under my belt, having seen what wrecks other girls have made of their lives through bad choices, and at the same time seeing how strong motherly love can be, even for someone else's child, I completely understand, but then I was a bundle of mixed feelings to think that even here I was not totally free of adult supervision.

Corky put on some soft "chill" music and I poured some more champagne. We were all getting pretty tipsy. I kept looking Larry's way and mostly he was apparently trying not to meet my gaze. When at last my eyes caught his I gave him a look conveying great urgency, as if to say "What are you waiting for?"

Larry and Pepper were to my right, with Pepper between us. To my left was Corky. We were all sitting cross-legged, except for Pepper, who was on her tummy. At long last, Larry started to rub her upper back. Her eyes were closed, but I did see a little Mona Lisa smile appear on her lips. That's when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and Corky kissed me dryly on the lips. "Okay," I thought. "Let's see where this goes."

Corky was a surprisingly good kisser, a talent any girl will tell you is essential. A guy can look as gorgeous and hunky as can be, but if he is clueless when it comes to kissing, forget it. The biggest nerd with a talented tongue will get my vote over a guy with movie star looks who just doesn't get it when it comes to kissing. The worst are the guys who are germ-phobic and don't want to swap spit. What chance is there, do you think, he's going to be a talented muff-diver? (Speaking of which...another important skill.)

Anyway, I was starting to get worked up just from kissing when I heard moaning coming from Pepper. I took a quick look to find Larry's hand had strayed under Pepper's short little skirt and was caressing her cute little ass, which she had lifted just a bit. Why? So that her hand could get in there to play with her pussy! Now she had a definite smile on her face. Larry looked at me with a smile as well. I winked at him. He could see I was having fun, too.

I realized now that Corky had seen what was going on and was looking lovingly at his sister. He was glad she was enjoying herself, which made me feel better about him. Maybe they were preppies. They couldn't help that. But they were what my dad would call "mensches" (real folks) as well.

Corky and I got back to business. He pushed me down onto my back and we started kissing some more, and of course (to my delight) he had a pretty good idea what to do with my boobs. Glancing over at Pepper and Larry from time to time, I could see that they had gotten a head of us a bit, for Larry had found his way into into one leg hole of her undies and was giving her a pretty vigorous massage. However, soon Corky was massaging my own clit as well. His finger started to go in but I crossed my legs reflexively, reminding him "I just lost it yesterday, remember? I'm a little sore." "Uh?...Oh!" he said.

I didn't want to disappoint him, though, so I turned the table on him. I started kissing him and massaging his cock through his pants. He unzipped his pants for me and got his cock out. I held his cock in my hand while I kissed him, rubbing the glans with my thumb. Soon a little precum had drooled out of it and, wow, that stuff is awfully slippery! As soon as I started rubbing that in he got noticeably more excited.

Slowly, I stopped kissing Corky and slithered down to his waist, helping him get out of his clothes while I did the same. Soon, I was naked and sucking his dick furiously. The sounds Corky started to make after a while told me he was getting pretty outrageously excited, so it was no surprise when he pushed me away mumbling "Not yet." I laid my head on his thigh with his softening prick where I could look at and admire it.

It was then that I felt an unfamiliar sensation. Someone was sticking a wetted finger in my ass. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that it was Pepper. She looked into my face with a gaze obviously intended calm me, and said simply, "Relax your asshole, sweetie, and let me in. I can tell nobody's ever done this to you before. Don't worry, it's gonna be fun."

And so another finger popped another cherry on that trip. My first serious anal intrusion. Corky caught on to what was going on and soon he and I were doing a "69 on the side" with him licking my pussy while his sister fingered my ass.

Since then, I've become a total anal slut. I've even had a few anal-only orgasms, but mostly what works best anal stimulation and penetration combined with vaginal sex or clitoral stimulation. All of my most explosive and all of my strongest orgasms have come that way.

I soon noticed that Pepper, who was on her side as well was being rogered pretty hard from behind by Larry, and from the way she rolled her eyes and moaned I could tell she was lovin' it bigtime. Larry's eyes were closed as he concentrated on what he was doing, which was, basically banging like there was no tomorrow. At one point, he had to stop, probably to keep from cumming, and they both took a breather.

While, like many teen girls who want to avoid coitus, I had given blowjobs before, it was here that I learned to give deep throat and hold off the gag reflex. It's so ungraceful to gag on a cock and it really tends to kill the mood. It makes the guy look look abusive even when it's your decision to give it to him. It seemed that, all of a sudden, I could take a dick as far back as it would go and I could hold off the gagging. This is a skill I've always been grateful for since I learned it, and it was right then and there that I learned it.

I let Corky cum mostly in my mouth (another first), but I let the last few dribbles out onto my lips and cheek and spread it around with his cock, mostly just to put on a little show for him.

I rolled onto my back and got next to Pepper, putting our heads together. I called to Larry, then, who got up over our heads, straddling them, and Pepper and gave his glans a wet tongue massage, mixing in some good old fashioned cocksucking, a duty we took turns at for a while.

When Larry finally exploded (and do mean "exploded"), he shot right onto Pepper's tits and belly, dropping back into a steaming heap of spent flesh when he was done. Meanwhile, I slowly licked every drop of hot cum off her breasts, being sure to spend extra time on her nipples.

That done, she and I did a long and leisurely 69 on the side and managed to cum almost simultaneously.

We were all so exhausted, we didn't even go to bed. Rather we all stayed there in front of the fireplace under some of the Pendleton blankets that had been piled up at both ends of the massive leather couch.

In the a.m., I was awakened by the sound of the big wooden front door closing. That was Cass taking her leave. About 10 minutes later, I heard her plane taxi out onto the lake and take off. Gradually, the sound trailed off into silence.

I woke Larry up, and in the process Pepper and Corky woke up as well. "We should get going," I told Larry, who agreed. We re-dressed, packed up our things, and gave our new friends great big hugs, turning to wave as long as we could see the house. All that time, they remained on the porch, wrapped in their blankets and waving back.

As we approached the upside-down canoe and righted it, I said, "Preppies aren't so bad." He laughed to himself, but eventually said, "I grant those preppies are okay." "You're okay," I said. He looked at me with mock anger and said, "I go to school with preppies, but I'm no preppy."

The paddle back was quiet. The black water was smooth as glass under the still-gray sky. The wildlife was out in force, especially the ospreys and bald eagles, for bald eagles are fish eagles. They might catch the occasional rabbit or grouse, but they tend to nest near rivers and lakes and most often can be seen hunting fish. Twice, we saw an eagle sail down from the sky and pick a trout out of the water the way you or I might pluck a grape out of a fruit bowl.

We saw a mother deer with a fawn drink from the lake water. Further on, a bull elk with a giant rack of antlers watched us intently, no more than 20 feet away from us. We also saw otters (or mink?) and a number of red squirrels chasing around on fir trees.

When we reached the bunk house, I contacted the ranch by radio and assured Seth we'd be back before dark. He said that Maggie would be glad to hear we were safe. "Why, didn't Cass tell you?" I teased. He chuckled and added he'd be glad to have us back as well. Seth is not a man of many words, and when he says something, he means it, so that was a lot for him to say.

We had to scoot a bit to get back because both of us wanted a real dinner, and not the jerky and apples and such which was all that was left of our supplies. There were more supplies in the cabin, of course, but they were really for winter emergencies and we could easily get back if we didn't waste any time.

And so, we dragged into the ranch at about 7 p.m., put the saddles and the rest of the riding gear away, led the horses to their stalls, and took what had to go back into the ranch house with us.

Seth was sitting at the table with his feet propped up on the table in his gray woolen work socks, his dirty Levis dirtier than ever. (And as for the feet on the table thing, unlike Pepper and Corky's forest home, the ranch house has only one room that functions as kitchen, dining room, living room, and family room so, if you can't relax there, where can you relax?!!!) Maggie was leaning on the counter next to the stove when we trundled in and smiled just the way I'd expect my mom smiles when she hasn't seen me for a while.

"You guys go freshen up a bit," she said. I've got ribs and beans for you and some freshly baked cherry pie." A $50 lobster dinner wouldn't have sounded better. In fact, "stick to the ribs" fare was just what Larry and I wanted.

Larry and I dragged our tired selves back to our respective rooms to change. He had gotten to the bathroom ahead of me. The door was open and he was just kind of sponging the sweat and grit off his body when I got there. Seeing the bathroom was occupied, I started to walk away, but he called under his breath: "Jill, come here." I turned on my heel and stepped in. "What?" "Look," he said, pointing down to the wastebasket, where, amid the used kleenexes and various wrappers were at least a half dozen condom wrappers. Maggie and Seth had been using our away time very well indeed. I felt good for them.

In the remaining days, Larry and I spent quite a little time together. When I was less sore, we did our share of fucking by wandering off together after our chores were done. That was the summer I became a woman in at least one sense of the word.

Maggie took me aside at the end of the first full day back and commented on the change in Larry. She asked, "Whatever did you do to him? He's changed." But then she put a finger on my lips and said, "Maybe I don't want to know."

Larry and I do stay in touch, and there may be more Larry stories to come. I also hear from Pepper and even Corky from time to time. Definitely more stories will be coming from that quarter.

I know I teased you with stories about horse sex. Sorry, I've never really "done" a horse outside of a breeding situation. You never know what the future holds, though. The more I fuck, the more cocks seem to be getting smaller! I do have a story about a dog, though.

But that's a story for another day.

If you've read my series of stories called The Trip West, you may remember that at one point the girls challenged me to fill in the story told us by Tanya, the bar owner in Guyana who used to be a government assassin. This is that story, nearly two years later.

My name is Tanya. I am an American expat who runs a bar in Guyana. Or, rather, I did, which will make sense after a while. By "expat," I don't mean I've given up my citizenship (though the recent Republican administration tempted me). No, I just mean I've found a place to live outside the U.S. border.

I was attracted to Guyana for several reasons. First, the climate is tropical and Caribbean, with palm tree-lined beaches mostly free of cigarette butts, empty beverage cans, and condom wrappers. Secondly, the people are friendly, though as in any poor part of the world, there is a limit to how far you can trust strangers. Finally, they speak English. While I speak fairly good (not fluent) Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Portuguese, it's nice to live in a place where one can generally count on being completely understood.

My bar is accessible from Guyana's capital, Georgetown, by road, but more than half my customers are people who sail in and tie up at my dock, whether from Georgetown or much further afar. Many of them are repeat customers, the others most likely having heard about me by word-of-mouth from other sailors.

A lot of my regulars come here hoping for a show. No, not a floor show, but the kind of show that develops when a drunk turns rude and disorderly. You see, I'm ex-military, and even though I'm a 140 lb. 5'7" woman, I can handle almost any man on earth in a fight. The few I might not be able to handle are almost certainly military men like my father. And in the end, I'm not so certain I couldn't handle him, though of course it would never have come to that.

My father, Angus "Gus" Walker, was one of the top hand-to-hand instructors in the American military, and in his last few years, he'd been teaching a lot of spec ops and black ops soldiers the skills he'd picked up over time. Although you wouldn't want to tangle with him under any circumstance, by far he was best known as perhaps one of the military's top knife fighters.

He was raised by an ex-marine-turned-woodsman and/or survivalist mostly in Alaska and Northern Washington State. Grandpa was also a knifemaker of some note, and he passed a lot of his knifemaking and knife fighting skills along to dad.

Following in his father's footsteps, dad joined the Marines and quickly rose through the ranks as high as he wanted to go. He didn't want to end up behind a desk or at a meeting table. He wanted to remain a fighter. And while he did have leadership skills, his skills were best used in terms of training and leading teams to do some of the country's dirtiest dirty work. Wet work, where "wet"does not refer to water.

Finally, he ended up in the grand elite of the military, among the guys who did things so important and sensitive that they needed to remain secret. Although it never happened, he might have gone on a mission never to return, and totally without any acknowledgement that he'd been on duty at the time. More likely, his absence and death would have been reported as lost at sea or in an explosion, where there would be no need to produce a body. You've heard of the Rangers and SEALs? His branch is so "black" it doesn't even have a name.

I barely remember my mom. She died when I was three. I can close my eyes and see her kind face gazing into mine. I've never been short of parenting, though. If my father was one of the great soldiers, he was also one of the great dads. Somehow, against all odds, he managed to make me feel loved and cared for even as his commitment to the military grew and he had to be away for days and weeks at a time.

While at first I did all the girly-girl things like dolls, tea parties, and pink dresses, as time went by I tended to identify more and more with my father and his values. So I learned at first how to make knives, then how to use them in ordinary tasks, and finally (after begging incessantly for months), he began teaching me about combat. I was probably about fourteen at the time.

His resistance was understandable. He knew that it was how his own military career started, and his dream for me was for me to become a wife and mother and be one of the people he was dedicated to protecting. He was afraid that I'd end up doing what he did, or something like it, and either come home in a bag or a box, or not at all.

At first, his dream started to become true as I won various teen beauty contests and became the Homecoming Queen the year I graduated from high school. Unfortunately, his nightmare became true after graduation, and I became a soldier, too. I did so under the excuse of getting my college degree paid for, but my instructors soon recognized my skills and I was directed toward a life as a particular kind of spook. The kind who gains trust and then kills.

Most spies simply gather intel as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Others, however, do dirty work, and my good looks combined with my combat skills led me down the path of a modern day mata hari. I became an assassin using my feminine appearance and wiles to insinuate myself into situations with opportunities to do wet work.

Now, of course, along the way I picked up a lot more than knife training because, frankly, there was little anyone other than my father could teach me about knife combat. I trained with the American military's top instructors and was sent to Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, and the Phillipines to train in various specialized skills. In a unique exchange program, I was even sent to Russia (yes, Russia!) to learn with the top Speznaz instructors while they sent specialists to train with the likes of my father.

Strangely, despite the tensions existing between Russia and the United States, soldiers at the top level are professionals and have a lot in common, and in a sense are a brotherhood. So, just as you might see basketball or baseball players competing against each other exchange pleasantries on the court or field, being on opposing teams didn't prevet Igor Ouspensky, a top Speznaz combat instructor, from becoming my father's favorite drinking buddy after Russia shrugged off Communism to become a corrupt quasi-democracy. I would sit there, rapt, listening to stories excerpted from their many adventures where countries and names were omitted or changed in order to protect their respective national secrets. And yet, I'm sure each knew exactly what or whom the other was talking about.

I'll never forget the afternoon, shortly after graduating high school, when Igor came to visit. Dad and he were engaged in small talk. Dad mentioned that he'd been training me and Igor jokingly suggested some sparring. Dad got out a pair of rubber knives and, to be sure, Igor was holding back a bit, but when I scored the first "touch" of a rubber blade to flesh, he looked shocked and blamed it on the alcohol. We continued, and he fended off every other attack, but he never got through a serious touch either, and from that point forward, I was no longer just Gus's pretty daughter. I was another soldier.

Russians, like Hispanics, are a passionnate crew. They will stand by a friend with a fanatacism bordering on insanity. Dad regarded Igor as such a friend, and I'm sure Dad felt the same about Igor. But strangely I hadn't heard from Igor since my father's suspicious "suicide" two years earlier. I thought he had forgotten about me, and I had no way to get in touch with him. So, I was in the process of forgetting him as well.

So, imagine my surprise when, one slow morning in the bar, in walks Igor. Even at 58 years of age, an imposing man. Men like Igor and my father walk around with an air of self-assurance that is intimidating to some and a challenge to others. There were just three people in the room other than me, two of them playing poker and third a little under the weather from heavy drinking the night before, drinking orange juice, and staring out the open door. When Igor walked through the door, all eyes followed him as he went to the end of the bar, where he knew I'd meet him for a big Russian bear hug.

I fought off the tears, because of all of the memories flooding back about times with him and my dad. "Good to see you," he said in English that was even better than before, lacking all but the tiniest hint of the Russian brogue. He had also learned to use articles. Ever noticed how movie Russians always drop the "the" from their speech?

Igor is not dumb soldier. He speaks German, Dutch, Italian, French, and several slavic languages as well, I'd been told. Not only was he a killing machine, he was a bit of an intellectual as well. With his linguistic skills, I'm sure he'd conducted quite a few interrogations in his time. While I'm fairly sure he lacked a college degree, he could discuss Russian literature with expertise and was quite conversant with 20th Centure American literature, too, being a big fan of Salinger, Salter, and Pynchon.

As I sat him down at the bar and poured him a Canadian on the rocks, he came right out with it: "Your father did not commit suicide. Or not willingly." "I agree," I said. "I never believed that." "Good, that saves me trying to convince you. There are only three things he would die for: his country, to keep a secret, or to save a person he loved. I'm thinking it was you."

The only reason it didn't hurt to hear Igor say that was because it was what I thought as well.

He took the first of the two big gulps that would empty the glass. Like most Russians I'd met, it would take more than a double shot of whisky to faze him. "Do you have any ideas? Any clues?"

"Oh, yes. There was a suicide note that said 'Take care of the orchids.'"

Igor shrugged, indicating it meant nothing to him. This was followed by a look asking me if it meant anything to me.

"We don't grow orchids. Never even discussed it. Obviously it's a clue or code. It's been so frustrating for me that I can't figure it out."

After downing the remainder of the alcohol, Igor said: "Shall we find out?"

"Do you have the time?" I asked. "Little girl, I am out of the military now. Private citizen. I have the time. Shall we conduct an investigation? Do you have someone to run this place for you if you are gone for a while?"

"I have a local helper. Toonsie. He's been with me for more than a year, and he has run the place a few days at a time while I've gone sailing. I suppose it's time to give him more responsibility. He'll be in later and I'll ask Toonsie if he'd mind."

"He won't," said Igor. "In a backwater country like this, they are always looking for opportunities. Is he honest?" "I think so," I replied. "Does he know you were a spook and assassin?" I laughed, "I'm sure I've said more than I should have a few times when I've had a bit too much booze in my belly." "Did you ever break up a bar fight or deal with a violent customer?" "Many times." "He knows well enough," Igor concluded with a huge grin.

Igor hung around and we talked about everything but my father. He even thought it'd be a kick to wait tables, so all I had to do was pour drinks until Toonsie walked in. I don't know what Igor expected, but a 6'6" tall 320 lb. New Guinean probably wasn't it. Toonsie could definitely take care of any but the worst situations, and for the rest, there was a .38 and a shotgun behind the counter, mostly used to get rowdies' attention.

I introduced Igor as an old family friend, and Igor was definitely impressed with the power of Toonsie's handshake. "Say, fella," asked Igor with a laugh, "you're in the wrong ocean, aren't you?" "Is any ocean the wrong ocean for a sailor?" was the reply. "You got me there," replied Igor with a big belly laugh. Toonsie added, "I be on a big freighter that lose power and pile up on rocks down Brazil way. I no speak Portuguese but some English, so I wander up here. I learn English in school. I like here. This good lady. I like job."

"She's a good girl," said Igor as he put his arm around me. Did I see a brief flash of jealousy in Toonsie's eyes at the ease with which I accepted this act of physical affection?

I spent the rest of the afternoon briefing Toonsie on aspects of my job he'd need to be aware of: ordering supplies, legalities (not that there was much in the way of enforcement out here), a list of customers who'd bounced checks or used stolen credit cards. I was sure things would run well in Toonsie's hands. Toonsie, despite looking like a big lunk, was actually a very smart guy. The place would run like a swiss watch after a while. When I felt I'd imparted all it was possible to impart, I grabbed his massive right hand and gave him the two-handed handshake, squeezing as hard as I could (which was far less hard than he could squeeze). Looking into his kind round face I said, "I trust you. You'll be alright. Besides, I'll have my cell phone with me and while I won't be able to take calls all the time, I'll check my messages when I can."

I travel light, and so with a flight bag and a medium-sized backpack thrown into the back of Igor's rented Mercedes, we headed to Georgetown and from there by commercial jet to London.

I had been left a substantial amount of money by my father, who saved every penny he could, and invested it wisely. It was several million dollars. Much of it I'd sunk into the bar, but there was enough left over to make me feel comfortable taking off on this trip.

Igor had done well for himself as well, having invested heavily in, of all things, such Internet stocks as Yahoo and Google. I told you he was smart. He'd parlayed $20,000 into millions. Strange: a bar owner cum assassin and a commando cum stock trader, both millionaires, on the path of a murder mystery.

We slept most of the way. Igor explained that he knew several people in London who might put us up, but there was one in particular we needed to see anyway, since he'd been on Dad's team on several of their last missions. Once in London, Igor got on a phone and with a little help from an operator, got the number for Marshall Koontz. After some minutes of small talk, Igor mentioned my presence and seemingly that is what triggered an invitation to dinner and the offer of a room for as long as needed.

Marshall Koontz lives in the Kensington area, which has street after street of homes that we, in the U.S., would call townhouses. A long building would have a series of stairways or porches each leading to the front door of a single living unit, usually three to four stories tall and almost universally painted white. Koontz's place was four stories tall, but only about 20 feet wide and perhaps 40 feet deep. As soon as you came in the front door, you were in a small reception area with hat and coat racks and a place off to the side with a mat for wet shoes and boots. Like so many European homes (the English and Russians being the worst offenders) it had really bad gaudy wallpaper. This time it was a raised red velvet fleur-de-lis pattern over a gold background. Yechhh!

Marshall turned out to be a little on the small side for this line of work, and while his specialty was communications, his small size also qualified him for some of the most dangerous work: using small windows or ducts to penetrate target structures, and then sneaking or fighting his way to a door or window large enough to let the rest of the team in. I was equally sure he could give account of himself in a fight. At his size, he'd have to gain the respect of his fellows in the very macho world of covert ops. He was small, sure, but he'd know every conceivable way of using his stature to his advantage. I'm sure he was responsible for more than his share of shattered kneecaps.

Over dinner, we reminisced about Dad. I had met some of my father's teammates over the years, but not all of them. Marshall was new to me and he had some new stories. Out of the blue, he lamented, "I just don't understand your father going the way he did. It simply is not the Gus I remember." At this point, Igor jumped in to explain his theory about dad protecting me as well as the mission we were on to figure out what happened and the meaning of his reference to orchids.

After a long pause, and before I could say anything, Igor said, "I knew and worked with Gus for almost 30 years. I never knew him to be subject to any sort of deep depression. And then we have Tanya here." Looking at m: "You have no idea how much he loved you. He would do anything for you, including killing himself if necessary. And if that is what happened, I suspect he did it to protect you."

Looking at me and then Igor, Marshall asked, "Did Gus ever tell either of you about the incident on the last mission?" We both indicated that we hadn't.

Now, I knew that Marshall would be vague about where this all happened. In the black ops area, plausible deniability is everything. I was sure that neither my father nor Marshall would surrender key information under any kind of torture. But then...suppose what was at risk wasn't a secret butme?

Marshall started, "This happened in a jungle somewhere near the equator. There was a politician, a popular one, who had disappeared two weeks before an election he was expected to win, which was going to bring democracy to a country that had been thirsting for it for many years. The military junta had lost all credibility and in order to save its own skin, had ordered elections, expecting to be able to engineer a win. They hadn't counted on a charismatic young attorney coming to the fore and garnering so much popularity that none of their tactics could overcome his lead. You see, this election was going to be observed by the U.N. This is why the man had to go. He was so popular that, had he lost, there would have been rioting in the streets threatening to destabilize the region. Everyone knew he was a shoe-in.

"Between local intel and satellite imaging, we finally located him. Luckily, they hadn't killed him. I guess they felt they had more options by keeping him alive. They could always kill him later.

"We had two new guys on the team. Ralph was a sniper and Del had a lot of expertise in demolitions and underwater work. They came as a 'package,' having worked together for several years.

"Gus was the team leader, of course, and was a little uneasy about going out on an important and dangerous mission with two guys he barely knew. We didn't even have a chance to do any mock exercises with them.

"We dropped in at night. This place was about two miles from the coast on a small river. We'd be following the river for several hours until we reached the small compound where he was being held.

"I could see that your dad was concerned about Del, whose sense of humor had become increasingly bizarre as the hours slipped by. By the time we were halfway up the river, I reported to your father that I thought I'd seen Del pop a pill. Also, it looked like Ralph was concerned about him, too, though he was quietly expressing it to Del. Sometimes, I'd see them having a conversation that looked like Ralph accompanied by gestures that implied he was saying something like 'What the Hell do you think you're doing?'...that kind of thing.

"Afterward, we learned that for a few months, Del had been using various kinds of drugs. In this business, we see some wild and crazy shit, and I gather Del had seen much more than his share. Probably done some things he wished he hadn't had to do. We all bear that burden, but some bear it better than others. Some of us just lose sleep. Others...

"After we got to where we could observe the compound, we started executing the plan. Because we knew the layout from satellite imaging, we were approaching from the side where the prisoner was likely being held in a small cabin. Maybe 200 yards beyond was a barracks house. Any significant commotion would, no doubt, have a number of armed men on top of us.

"Four men, including Del, made their way through a gap they cut in the barbed wire to a nearby outhouse. I had binoculars and so did Gus, so I saw what he saw, which was Del acting erratically and the other men gesturing for him to be quiet. Del pushed one of the men away and started slapping his own face, so far, he'd been quiet, but clearly he was about to go nuts and jeopardize the entire mission."

Igor and I were transfixed. A nightmare scenario was starting to unfold. A fiasco that could lead to all kinds of bad shit.

Marshall looked at me and, coming as close to tears as a man in this line of work could, he said, "Your father did what had to be done. He told Ralph to shoot Del. Ralph said 'What?' 'Shoot him in the head,' your dad said. 'Shoot him!' your dad said again. When Ralph hesitated, your dad took the sniper rifle from him and looking carefully through the night scope, he shot Del in the head. The other guys who'd been with Del were momentarily shocked at the rifle report, but immediately realized what had happened and ran to the shack, where it turned out the man was chained to a chair and guarded by just two men with rifles. They were taken out quickly. Things would have gone quicker had he been tied with ropes, of course, but they were prepared with bolt cutters and even explosives, in case he was in a cell. So, it took about a minute to free him.

"Of course, the shot woke up the bunkhouse and your father trained the sniper rifle on the door, taking out the first guy to emerge. This naturally made anyone else inside think twice about using that doorway. Soon, a few of them had the courage to dash out windows or the back door and were streaming through side paths in the brush toward the cabin, making aim difficult. Your father had bought enough time, though, and the prisoner was freed. Del had been dragged to the river and weighted down where the large crocodilians known to infest it probably made short work of him. "We leave no man behind" doesn't apply in this kind of work. Completing the mission while leaving little evidence behind is always the overriding concern, and every guy there knows it. If you can get a casualty out, you do. If you can't...at least try to eliminate them as evidence.

"The mission was a complete success in terms of its objective, but nobody talked about Del on the way back. I'm sure Gus made a full report and was exonerated. He really had little choice under the circumstances, and on these missions, the mission is the most important thing. Del was listed as killed in combat. As far as his family knows, he died a hero.

"Tanya, your father wasn't the same after that. He seemed to lose a lot of the enthusiasm for the work he'd felt before. You'd find him sitting thinking."

"That explains why he was particularly quiet after the last mission," I said. "He surprised me when he said he was ready to retire. No I understand why."

Igor jumped in with, "But the point of telling us, I suppose, is to point to a motive?"

"And possibly a suspect," said Marshall. "You see, it came out later that Ralph and Del were lovers."

Igor was shocked at first, as was I, but then Igor said, "Well, the Greeks encouraged homosexuality, thinking it created closer bonds." "But that was in a society which accepted homosexuality more than ours," Marshall added.

I have no quibble with gays, but while dad was military through-and-through, including following orders he didn't agree with ("Dont ask, don't tell" being one), Ralph's hesitancy to shoot Del would be to him an example of why gay lovers had no place in the military, and certainly not operating in the same unit together.

I asked Marshall, "Do you know where Ralph is now?" "Not really. He quit right after that mission. I have the feeling he was planning on going expat in Asia for a while. It seemed to suit him. He had mentioned liking Thailand."

That was pretty much what Marshall could tell us. Conversation drifted into more pleasant areas the rest of the evening. We spent the night, bade him good-bye in the a.m., and headed for a coffehouse a few blocks away where I made some email inquires to various connections I still had in the intelligence services. About all they could tell me was that Ralph had family in Lawrence, Kansas. I got a number for his sister, and that conversation went something like this: "Hello, is this Ruth Moreland?" "Yes, it is." "My name is Tanya. My dad was his commanding officer on some missions. My father passed away and I'm trying to track down your brother, Ralph. How can I reach him?" She hesitated, "What is this about?" I hated to tell a lie to his sister in order to get information that might lead to the death of her brother, but that didn't stop me. "It's just a matter of some money owed to him." "Oh, all right."

She told us that as far as she knew, he was in Bangkok but that she hadn't heard from him in quite a while. She asked us, if we found him, to please have him call her. I thanked her and told her I'd pass her request along if I found him. That made me feel bad.

A place to start.

"Want to come with me?" I asked Igor. "I wouldn't miss this for anything," he said with a huge grin.

To tell you the truth, I was happy. I'm a pretty tough cookie, and I've killed a few men, but Ralph was from the créme-de-la-créme of elite services, and much as it would have been easy to blindside him, I wanted him to know why he was going to die. I wanted to see the look in his face. Unfortunately, he was almost without a doubt one of the small percentage of men on earth I had to fear in a tussle. With Igor along, any struggle was pretty much a foregone two-against-one, for Igor was one of those men as well. As good as Ralph surely was, men like Igor and my father were a rung or two above them.

This time it was Igor who pulled some strings. We took the hovercraft across the Channel and a TGV train to Paris, where we boarded an Aeroflot flight to Moscow and from there a short series of Russian military transports to the far Eastern end of Siberia. From there, things would slow down a bit because the best his connections could get us was a ride on a Russian merchant marine ship.

The sailors I see in my bar bar in Guyana tend to be rich drifters with fancy yachts or water hippies who just sail around smoking dope and drinking wine on small marginal sailboats. Some of the latter are even vegetarians or vegans and are completely harmless.

In stark contrast, the crew on most steamers are a dangerous brew of people who like being away from law and order as much as they can manage. Many have criminal backgrounds forcing them into jobs others would shy away from. You don't fuck around with these guys. If you offended them as a group you'd probably find yourself being tossed overboard at 3 a.m. And if that's the crew on most steamers, you can imagine what a bunch you'd find on a Sibera-based steamer like the one we were on. And my being a "lady" didn't count for anything. A ship is one of those places where men do not welcome women. We're supposed to be bad luck.

It's a fine line, but you could also earn their respect in many of the same situations where you might earn their disgust. The secret is that you can safely offend one person as long as you don't offend several. If you offend one person, and the others laugh it off, he pretty much has to laugh it off, too. If you say something that offends a bunch of them, you're toast.

I was in the ship's mess the first day loading up my plate with some of the hearty but only marginally appetizing fare that passed for grub on the old tub when the guy who was loading his plate next to me put a hand flat on my ass and squeezed. When I turned to look at him, I realized that almost all the men in the room were watching. I'm sure he'd said something like "Watch this" before he did it. Here was an opportunity.

I popped his tray onto his chest, turning the front of his T-shirt reddish purple with hot borscht. Before his anger could turn to action, I poked a finger in his eye, not enough to injure it, but enough to force him to close his eyes briefly, whereupon I kneed his groin, and twisted his arm until he was on his knees, I then kicked him in the ass, sending him sprawling face down.

The crew was silent until Igor laughed out loud. While he wasn't a crew member, his physical appearance is so commanding and his manner so self-assured, that he had their respect pretty much the first time they saw him. And, of course, unlike me, he was Russian. When Igor laughed, the rest laughed and the man on the floor got up, excused himself, and laughed, too. He held out his hand, perhaps to shake it, but more likely to toss me head over heels. That may have been his plan, but when he looked at me I think he saw my total lack of fear. So...when I grasped his hand, he simply smiled and said he was sorry and everyone went back to what they had been doing.

Now that they all had laughed, I was safe. I was safer when Igor explained that I was American ex-military, once upon a time, and into espionage and special operations. From that point onward, I was accepted into the crew as one of them. I even voluntarily chipped in to help with the crew's duties. I had become "one of the boys." Thoughts of my being a bad luck female totally vanished.

A couple of the crew had spent time in the Russian military and we started to hear war stories about Afghanistan, and about how it would eventually fall back into the hands of the Taliban anyway, no matter who tried to control things there. I tended to agree.

During slack time, Igor and I wouid train interested crew members in the ins and outs of hand-to-hand combat. I even showed them my knives. There was one in particular I had along specifically for taking care of Ralph, if he was the guy I was looking for. It was a long, slender filet knife. A fish fileting knife. Virtually, an ice pick with an edge.

This kind of knife is good for assassinations because if you want to stab someone in the heart, it goes in like flesh was butter and is long enough to reach the heart from almost any horizontal direction. It has a razor sharp edge because the blade material is quite thin, too. So...it's good for slitting a throat as well. Finally, this being a folding model, it was easy to hide on my person. When the time came, I might tape it to my thigh under a skirt.

I could hardly sleep at night as I rehearsed in my mind how I would take Ralph out. The thought that he might have leveraged a threat against me into forcing dad to kill himself put me into an almost overpowering rage. It was only Igor's rock-like placidity that kept me from going totally bonkers as the slow ship nudged its way down the Asian coast. He kept reminding me that we really knew nothing yet.

It was dawn when we arrived in Thailand, and after finding an internet cafe, we set about asking our contacts to refer us to someone we could trust, who could help us find our way around, and could speak Thai passably well. I turned up an ex-military expat, an old colleague of my father's, who had retired to Koh Samui, a resort island off the eastern coast of Thailand. As soon as I introduced myself, he invited me to come by, not even asking why I had contacted him. I guess just my name was enough.

I had heard many stories about, or involving, Teddy Waller from dad. He turned out to be an affable guy living in a surprisingly large house on Samui. His housekeeper, a lovely Thai woman of perhaps 28 or 30 years, met us at the door and ushered us to the back of the house, which was totally surrounded by a screened-in veranda. Teddy was sitting at a table with a bamboo frame. On it were a New York Times and what I assume was a local paper in the Thai language.

While Teddy was no spring chicken, but as always with spec ops guys, was in superb condition.

Luckily he was gracious and friendly. He offered us our choice of bottled water, Thai Singha beer, or gin and tonic made from, as he described it, "cheap gin and good tonic." To me, cheap gin and expensive gin don't taste all that different, and when it's hot, it's hard to beat gin and tonic. Igor went for the beer. Teddy yelled, "Kamala! Two G and T's and a Singha."

The drinks appeared in less than two minutes. I had heard soldiers talk about retiring to Thailand, where living was cheap, the women were beautiful, and where sex was no big deal. They said, you could get a housekeeper or cook for peanuts, and it was understood that sex on demand was part of her duties. I couldn't look down my nose at them. These soldiers were practical men and, frankly, most of them would make lousy husbands. The women could use the money, too. Who's to say what's right and wrong between adults? The trade in kids is a different story, of course.

Once men in our branch of the military retire, the nightmares start. They think they can finally let down their guard, but then the memories flood back in. I remember one retiree saying that before he could sleep every night, he had to relive every kill, almost all of which were hands-on: close-in shootings, stabbings, slit throats, broken necks, and so on. What haunted most, I was told, was that almost every kill was a sneak or surprise attack, not a fair face-to-face "may the best man win" kind of fight. So...the guilt.

That was certainly my own experience. I don't think I know what deep sleep is. Every little sound wakes me up. I had to get rid of a refrigerator that manufactured ice cubes, because even though it was on the floor below me far from my room, it was constantly waking me up as the cubes rattled into their tray in the freezer compartment, making me wonder if perhaps I wasn't alone.

Thus, I don't begrudge these men lots and lots of sex, especially in a country where sex is available everywhere. At least his housekeeper wasn't underage. That would have been a problem for me.

Looking at the housekeeper, I could imagine that sex would really be something. She was a flower of a woman. And, despite being treated like a servant, she had a quiet dignity that added greatly to her beauty. She seemed devoted and bonded to Teddy.

I let Igor explain why we were there. Teddy had heard through the grapevine about my father's "suicide" and what he had had to do on that last mission. An American soldier killing an American soldier was distasteful, but the mission always comes first, and if Del was jeopardizing the mission, he had to be dealt with and dealt with swiftly and with certainty. "It was a fuckin' shame," he said, "but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Guys on missions like that are working for The Big Picture. Letting personal considerations interfere can jeopardize the mission, and if the mission weren't important, presumably you wouldn't be there."

So, I asked him point blank if he knew who Ralph was, or at least where to start looking. He hadn't heard of Ralph, and the problem with finding someone like him was where to begin. Presumably, Ralph, as a homosexual, would eventually turn up in a gay bar, if he was still in Thailand at all, which was yet to be proven.

He said he would make inquiries. He took us inside to his office and we watched him send e-mails to several friends in Bangkok. We would have to wait for their replies, and in the meantime, we were invited to enjoy his hospitality.

It was still early in the day, not quite noon, and the beach was not far away, so the three of us walked to a private beach where nudity was possible, for Thailand is surprisingly stodgy regarding nudity, especially considering how the sex trade flourishes. It wasn't so much that I wanted to be nude. I simply hadn't brought a bikini. I knew both of these men would probably enjoy the view, but they were worldly guys and wouldn't be shocked or overly excited by my body. The only weird part about it was that Igor was a close friend of dad, and it would be almost like being nude in front of my father, which hadn't happened since puberty. But that hardly mattered anymore.

As we walked, Teddy explained that the King of Thailand, a benevolent dictator if ever there was one, had been trying to clean up the image Thailand had for tolerating the worst sorts of exploitation, especially of children. As a result, much of the child whoring had gone way underground or offshore and the rest operated quite a bit less blatantly than before. Waitresses were required to wear attire and outright sex shows were gone entirely, at least from venues accessible to anyone off the street. Even so, mirrored floors and very loose attire allowed waitresses and hostess girls to tease, and if you thought the tease never ever led to sex for cash, you'd have to be very naive indeed.

The place we went to was the property of a friend of Teddy's. He watched it for them when they weren't there, which was most of the time. Their primary dwelling was in Berlin. They had just left and would not be back for at least three months. He had a key to their home and an open invitation to use it on the theory that it was safer if people knew it was used regularly than if the word got out that it was unoccupied for lengthy periods of time. The irony, he said, was that if one had to worry about burglary or vandalism, it would probably be done by a tourist. The Buddhistic Thais are by inherently honest, friendly, and tolerant.

We swam and sunned ourselves for an hour or so and then went inside for lunch. Teddy kept their fridge stocked with basics. Needless to say, the bar was well stocked. There were some frozen burger patties and buns, which Teddy prepared for us on a hibachi. It wasn't the best burger I've ever had (the ones you might have in my bar are far better), but Igor and I were famished, and my second and third gin and tonics of the day helped make it taste better. It also made the two older men look better, and I'm afraid I started to act a little randy.

You'd think that two older men wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of a younger woman wearing but a towel around her hips who is giving evidence of being "in the mood," but to their credit (and perhaps out of respect for my father), they acted in fatherly fashion and encouraged me to take a nap on a chaise lounge out on the shady patio. I slept until about 4 p.m., waking up with a head-splitting hangover to find the two guys sitting at a computer in the family room.

Igor saw me first and said, "I think we have something. One reply suggested we try a certain gay bar on Phuket. Phuket is..." I finished for him in a groggy mumble: "...another Island." I'd heard many of dad's friends refer to it as 'Fuckit Island," a reference to the several brothels which had operated there. The real pronunciation of the island's name is more like "foo kett."

But as for gays, the Thais had always accepted androgyny, hence the famed "ladyboys" of Thailand who, except for their cocks and balls plus the lack of a vagina, looked every bit like girls. And sometimes, before getting breast enhancements, they could even pass for underage girls. Very convenient for men of a certain taste who could thusly remain technically "legal."

But Ralph, as far as we knew, was into very butch men, not men passing as girls. Still, we knew very little. Perhaps he had wide-ranging tastes. Maybe his tastes had changed.

Teddy suggested that he could fly us there in his own private plane, and so we flew to Phuket in a small private jet. Looking out the window into the gathering gloom, I tried to picture the scene when my father died. Was a gun to his head? Had Ralph been there? Who was the enemy who had finally subdued the bravest, truest warrior I had ever known?

And would I finally find out what that cryptic suicide note meant?: "Take good care of the orchids."

It was close to midnight by the time we arrived at the club. Clearly, this was a bar for leather queens. It was full of men wearing form-fitting black leather or vinyl pants, shorts, or assless chaps. Given the oppressive heat and humidity, few even wore a leather vest. Most were bare-chested. A few wore caps, but most did not. Again, due to the heat and humidity.

Apparently, a show was about to begin because most of the men had left the bar and were sitting fairly close to the club's stage. An announcer walked out to the microphone in the center, switched it on and announced that The Phuket Five were about to perform. I think the three of us were expecting some variation on The Village People, but the curtain parted and there were five handsome, well-groomed, evidently gay men. When I say "evidently gay," I don't mean in the flaming queen sense of the word, but in that strange Freddie Mercury sense of the word. Freddie possessed a level of energy and charisma that was patently and potently masculine, and yet I think every woman senses that he was not attracted to women.

The group was all dressed the same: those sleeveless undershirts which have come to be known as "wifebeaters," tight-fitting black leather pants, and deck shoes worn without socks.

I've been in gay bars before, and so I was expecting lip syncing, but instead it was more like very advanced karaoke. The instrumental part was apparently prerecorded minus the vocal parts, which were supplied by The Phuket Five. They started out with "I Can't Fuck Without Falling In Love," which got a huge round of applause as soon as the audience recognized the tune.

The bartender brought us our drinks and Teddy casually asked him if he knew if he knew the Ralph we were looking for. The bartender pointed to the stage and said, "He's the one in the middle. The tallest one."

So there was Ralph. He was a tall man, 6'2" at least, and in extremely good shape. I knew instantly that the only way I could take him was by surprise, but I didn't really want to surprise him. If he killed my father, or had had him killed, I longed to see the look in his eyes when he knew that his life was coming to an end, right there, right then. For that, I'd need Igor's help.

At the same time, I was realizing that even avenging my father couldn't assuage my anger and make me feel good. If I had a scale with the loss of my beloved father, who had raised and protected and nurtured me on one side, and then removed it, what could I possibly remove from the other side that would bring everything back into balance?

Nothing. Nothing could do that. And yet, justice had to be done.

We determined what time Ralph got off. We also learned that he lived not far away and that meant he would probably be walking.

And so it was that at 2:15 a.m., he left the club. We had been waiting across the street and followed him. His walk was confident and quick. The two men kept up with him easily, but I am smaller with shorter legs, so it took more effort on my part.

At last, he reached an apartment building where he stopped in front of the door and was fumbling in his white slacks (no longer black leather) for his keys.

Igor called out "Ralph...Ralph Moreland!" Ralph turned and looked at us. He wasn't afraid. "Yes?" Igor held up his hand in that universal gesture which means "Hold on a second."

In a few seconds we had caught up and Teddy asked a few questions to make sure we had the right Ralph. He handled it in a friendly, jovial, unprovocative way. Military men can become almost instant friends, having so much in common from their careers that they don't have in common with ordinary citizens.

Ralph didn't even flinch when I was introduced. Clearly, he knew who I was by name, though he clearly had no idea what I looked like until that very moment.

Strangely, he continued to show no fear, no sign that he sensed any danger whatsoever.

In fact, he invited us up for drinks! His apartment was what one might expect a gay man's apartment to be. Like many foreign nationals living in Thailand, he had a young woman as a housekeeper. He had us sit on his large couch, then excused himself to help his housekeeper put together some drinks and snacks, and the three of us watched him to make sure that he wasn't arming himself. He was never out of our sight and did nothing the least bit hinky.

It was Teddy who said under his breath, "This man shows no sign of thinking you're here to avenge your father." Igor looked at me and added, "I can't believe he killed your father or even has guilty knowledge." I looked back in dismay, for I had been expecting closure of some sort. I had a deadly knife with me which I had had every intention of using to pierce his heart and slit his throat.

Ralph and the housekeeper set our drinks and snacks in front of us. Ralph excused his helper and told her she could go to bed for the night. She left.

Sitting in an armchair across from us, Ralph sat down and relaxed. Genuinely relaxed. "So you finally made it," he said.

I asked, "What do you mean, 'finally made it'?"

"You're here about the orchids, aren't you?"

Well, at least there was going to be no pretending he knew nothing about any orchids. He quickly sensed something was wrong and asked, "Your father didn't tell you? I know I didn't!"

I confessed that all I had was a cryptic suicide note telling me to take good care of the orchids, but I had no idea what it meant.

He turned white. "Oh, my God!" It was such a genuine reaction that I had no doubt his surprise was real.

I spoke up and said, "I suspect someone made him kill himself, possibly to protect me. I was wondering if the mention of the orchids was some kind of code to allow me to avenge his death."

Suddenly, Ralph caught up with my thought process, saying, "And so you were here quite possibly to kill me? If that is what you want to do, I'm dead. I have let three special ops killers into my apartment, thinking they were friends."

Teddy looked at me and Igor and jumped in to say, "I think I can safely say that that is off the table at the moment." Igor looked at me as well and nodded his head in agreement. I was baffled, so I asked simply "What do you know?"

A newly relaxed Ralph said, "You have it all wrong. I'll tell you everything."

He explained the mission as I had heard it explained before. We got a bit more detail about him and Del. We learned that he and Del had had a "thing" for about a year before the mission but that Del had started using drugs and had been showing signs of drug-related paranoia. They had been growing apart by the time of the mission.

When my father had asked Ralph to kill Del, he had been unable to pull the trigger, so dad did it for him. He didn't hold it against my father; it had to be done. He simply couldn't be the one to do it to someone he was so close to.

"After that, your father and I worked together a couple more times and became friendly. Strangely, knowing that he had killed someone I was close to allowed him to open up to me. I'm sure that you, as someone in the trade, know that there are nights when everything you've done bears down on you."

"I've had my sleepless nights," I confessed.

"Well, one day he finds out through back channels that the mission where he killed Del was more or less an errand done for a powerful political ally of the President. It had nothing to do with U.S. security interests. It wasn't necessary. It was a favor that likely increased support for the President's political party. This depressed your father greatly, for he was a man of honor and the man we saved went on to become yet another dictator."

I realized that I had noticed my father growing more and more quiet over the last year of his life.

"Your father told me that he was going to do what was necessary. The word 'suicide' was never spoken, and I had no idea it was suicide. He sat me down and explained that he wanted me to do something in case anything happened in the next few weeks. It was a letter, and he let me read it. It was a bequest.

"In this business, when you're in it for a while, you meet people, you make connections, and you get uncommon opportunities. Because of some work a friend of your father's had done, that person came into possession of an orchid farm. Because one of your father's missions had saved that man's son as a byproduct, your father was given this orchid farm. The letter told you that he was giving it to you. That's what the suicide note meant."

"Why didn't you follow up?" I asked. Ralph explained, "I ran afoul of the law here and had to spend two years in prison. I bought an artifact at a market and tried to send it home to my brother but the government here said it was an antiquity and that simple mistake put me in prison for smuggling. I had no idea how old it was and knew nothing of Thai laws on exporting antiquities even if I had.

"Shortly after I got in prison, I received word that my landlord had leased my apartment. I assumed that my possessions had been sold, destroyed, or thrown on the trash heap, but bless his Buddhist soul he kept everything including that desk over there. Your letter is in there. I would have sent it sooner but, quite frankly, I've had getting back on my feet as my top priority since getting out just two weeks ago. I feel I owe the landlord something for storing my stuff and I have a few debts that need to be taken care of. Debts to people who've been waiting two years. People who can't be ignored, if you catch my drift."

With that, he started for the desk, but as soon as he realized that Teddy was stiffening and that Igor was reaching for the pistol stuck in the back of his trousers, he went back to his chair and asked me to open the center drawer.

And there it was on top, addressed "My darling Tanya."

I opened it and it read as follows:

"Dearest Tonnie. If you're reading this letter, I've had to do what was necessary. I did something terrible, and though it wasn't my intention to do so, it's something I need to set right one way or another. I've tried to do it in the proper channels, but every attempt has ended in failure. I have this one option left, and leaving you is my only regret. But you are strong and capable of taking care of yourself now. My job as your dad is over and so is my work, for I can never serve the same masters ever again. And yet, there is nothing else for me to do.

A few years ago, I came into an orchid farm. It was a reward for saving someone else's child, so it's fitting that now it shall belong to mine. Use it to get as far from military life as possible. Be a flower farmer. Be a wife. Be a mother. Be anything other than a killer. Do it for me.

Good-bye and may we be together again in whatever awaits us...

Love,

Dad

It was in his handwriting and "Tonnie" was his pet name for me. Igor came over and I handed him the letter. After a few seconds, he put his arm around me, and that was enough to break my numbness. I burst into tears and cried on his shoulder for several minutes.

Terry spoke up and asked, "Where is this orchid farm?" Ralph got out a map and showed us. He said that the next day was his day off and that he'd be happy to show us, for father had shown it to him. We spent the night there and, truth be told, I never slept better in my entire life. This word "closure" really means something. Knowing the truth, having the burden of hatred swept out of my mind... Suddenly, I felt more peaceful and relaxed than I had in my entire life.

With Ralph at the wheel of a rental car and with Igor naviagating with a map on his lap, we drove five hours the next day, several times passing through villages hard-hit by the tsunami. I asked Ralph if my orchid farm had been affected by the tsunami and he said he could get no information while in prison and that, having just been out a short time, he hadn't had a chance to look into it. Apparently, the farm had no telephone service.

At first we passed the drive up to the farm, since it was unmarked except for a small wooden sign at ground level with a picture of a yellow orchid on it. The asphalt road wandered through the jungle for perhaps a quarter mile when it opened up into a small parking lot. Beyond were 20 or so hothouses. For some reason, I had thought it'd be a grove of trees or row upon row of bushes. I knew nothing, then, about flowers, much less anything as exotic as an orchid.

We entered the nearest of hothouses to be confronted with row upon row of blooming plants.

At the far end, an elderly hunched-over Thai man saw us and, after bowing, scooted out a back door. We marveled at the flowers. Even these hardened soldiers I was with, capable as they were of snuffing out a human life in the blink of an eye, were reduced to a state of abject wonder in the face of the overwhelming beauty before them.

Having apparently approached with the easy stealth of a panther, we suddenly realized that a handsome middle-aged Thai man in suit pants and an open white shirt was with us. As soon as he had our attention, he pressed his hands together and bowed, saying "Sawadi ka," w hich, like the Hawaiian "aloha," functions for both "hello" and "good-bye."

By then I had learned that Thai naming practices were not along Western lines and were quite difficult to understand. The concept of a "Smith" or "Wagner" or "Ortiz" type of family name didn't even arise in Thailand until early in the 20th Century with exposure to the West. Most Thai names are multisyllabic with three syllables seeming to be the bare minimum. Five- or six-syllable names not being uncommon at all.

With a smile, he said we could just call him "Mister Kek" or just "Kek." Thais use names given them by their families which are shorter and analogous to what we would call "nicknames."

After I introduced myself and he realized who I was, Kek bowed again, this time much more deeply and with apologies. All of a sudden, I was the boss.

He directed us to a large house with an expansive screened-in veranda where we were met by a tiny 40-ish Thai woman with a broad smile who introduced herself as "Mali" and invited us to sit. Once we were comfortable, Mali asked us in delightfully accented but understandable English what we might like to drink. I asked for a gin and tonic and my two companions did the same.

Mali whispered something to Kek who replied audibly, "Well then go to the supply shed and get some." She bowed and left. Kek explained, "We just ran out of gin here in the house, but we have plenty more on hand. It will take a few extra minutes. We said we could wait.

Kek talked for a while about how the farm had grown, about how part of it had been destroyed in the tsunami, and about how they were signing up a new customer just about every month, so that the farm was now making several million dollars a year.

He also talked about a new kind of orchid, a new color they had developed that no other orchid grower had. He said he wanted me to be the first person from the outside to see it. And so he took me out and told me how to find the special greenhouse that contained only this flower.

Ralph in particular had looked at me as if to ask if it might be wise for me to go on my own. He didn't fully trust Kek it seemed, but if my father did, that was enough for me.

It was at the far end of the property. The jungle air outside the greenhouses was hot and humid enough, but the inside of this greenhouse was even hotter and more humid.

Now, I know little about orchids as a flower, much less how to raise them. But I could tell that these were exceptionally beautiful flowers.

I wandered about for perhaps 15 minutes, totally wowed by the beauty of the plants. Having seen it all, I turned and headed back to the door. As I reached out to open it, a voice from off to one side said, "Darling."

Without turning to the source of the sound, I dropped my chin onto my chest and tears rolled down my cheeks, for I knew the voice of my own father. But was it an auditory hallucination or a dream? for how could it possibly be real? I turned to look and there he was, his hands in his pockets, smiling. Very much alive!

I ran to him yelling "Daddy!" He took me in his arms and almost crushed me with the strength of his hug. He kissed my forehead a dozen times while saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, sweetie."

Without my having to ask him, he answered all of my questions, explaining that enemies who had discovered his role in various missions against him had plotted to kill him, and had he not apparently died, they might have taken me hostage as leverage for him to give himself to them or, worse, might simply have assassinated me to punish him. And so, he and his superiors concocted the suicide story. They all agreed that I must not know the truth at that time, so that I could grieve convincingly. For my own protection.

I was at once pissed off at him for what I had gone through, but grateful to discover that I still had him.

He told me that only Kek and a couple higher-ups in the agency knew the truth and that not even Igor and Ralph knew, though they would now.

And so we walked together back to the main house.

As we walked in, Kek, who was standing with my companions, smiled glowingly. Ralph and Igor turned white as ghosts. Ralph stood at attention, for he was in the habit of doing so in the presence of a superior office.

Igor's response was quite different, however. Without hesitation he took me from behind, his arm around my neck and my right arm disabled. I was fairly helpless. At the same time he produced the small automatic pistol he had with him most of the time. "Wow," he said. "They really fucked up this time. What a mess."

"And so it was you who was to kill me, Igor?" Dad was flabbergasted.

"Oh, no," Igor replied, adding, "but now it's up to me to do the clean-up. Why couldn't you be dead? Now all of you must die!"

I wanted so much to act, but I could only do that with freedom of motion. He, as a soldier, knew exactly how to immobilize me, and so there I was, totally helpless.

So was my father, who knew that if he tried anything the killing would start, probably with him first, me next, then Ralph and Kek.

It was then that Mali entered with a drink tray. On it was a bottle of Bombay Gin, two glasses, a small bowl of ice cubes, and some lime wedges.

She stopped in her tracks and started to back out. Igor must have shook his head to indicated that, no, she must stay. She put the contents of the tray down on a table next to Igor, whose gaze stayed rivited on my father, who could be a threat in an instant. He knew that whatever he did, I'd respond in kind, so Igor had to keep my father at bay.

One of the advantages I'd had in my role as an assassin was that of being a woman. Women are easy to dismiss and misjudge. Most men are looking at other men as the threat. Unfortunately, I was being restrained by one of the best. If I tried anything, it would almost certainly result in instant death for me and the others. I'd have to wait for an opportunity.

But I didn't have to wait. The tray now empty, she snapped it at Igor's face so swiftly and accurately that it broke Igor's nose instantaneously. Igor, who had experienced far more pain than that, and knew his priorities, kept his grip on me tight and would have shot my father except that in that slight moment of broken attention, she deflected his arm away from dad and into a safe direction. Holding his wrist in a grip of steel, she leaned to one side and kicked Igor in the head. Between that and the way she was wrenching his wrist, she was soon the one with the gun.

Dad started to move in our direction. I was at this point able to slip away from Igor and father would have killed him with his bare hands had Mali not kicked Igor again, this time in the junk. When he bent over, she grabbed his head in the grip one uses to break a man's neck, and I'm sure she would have had not Kek and dad simultaneously shouted "Mali!" She stopped, clearly a bit disappointed, to wait for instructions.

Father said to her, "He'll be far more useful to us alive. Thank you! You could get us some rope." Kek sent her off to get rope with a nod of the head and a wave of his hand.

Dad turned to me and said, "Mali was a hand-to-hand fighting instructor for the Thai version of the Navy SEALs. My friends gave her to me as protection in just such a situation. I knew Igor wouldn't underestimate you, but the amount of attention he gave you and me gave Mali the opening she needed.

I never heard another word from Igor, who was broken in so many ways. Dad and Ralph tied him to a chair and dad, using an encrypted radio channel arranged for Igor to be picked up. We sat around drinking and talking while igor remained slumped in his chair.

After dark, some Thai military men showed up and took Igor into the night. He's probably being interrogated at this instant somewhere in Eastern Europe or South America where interrogations can be pretty rough.

Kek was all smiles. Ralph was, too. He was clearly almost as glad as I was to see my father alive. After dinner, dad said to Ralph, "There's plenty of work to do here, if you don't mind working with flowers."

Ralph smiled and said that that suited him just fine.

As for me, while I remain a silent partner in an Orchid farm, with the blessing of the Thai government I now operate a bar just a short drive from the farm. Just like my prior bar on the coast of Guyana, which Toonsie is buying from me, this one caters to people who sail in and tie up to our dock, as well as to many of the locals, both Thai and western.

With Mali as my helper, I feel safe. And the regulars hang out not only because they like the way we mix drinks, but hoping for the occasional rowdy visitor who might want to pinch a bottom or take a swing.

Aren't they in for a surprise!

You may have been wondering why it's been a while since I've written another post. Well, of course, it's not the first time there's been a short hiatus, but things have been going on requiring my attention.

Mainly it's been Elize, my friend whose twin sister was murdered and who was dealing with a very serious case of cancer while pregnant. (If you've never read my Moonlight and Elize story, now would be a good time.) She consistently refused chemotherapy that could conceivably put her into remission, though admittedly the chance of that outcome was slight at best. She always wanted to do what was best for her baby.

If you're sensitive to the nuances of grammar, you're guessing she's passed on, and that is the case. It's an amazing story.

I would visit with Elize almost daily after work, grabbing a bite in the hospital cafeteria, watching her getting weaker, accepting that she would die but hoping against hope that she would live to see her baby.

It is so hard to be the visitor in that situation, knowing that this person you've come to know and love will be gone soon. She had accepted her fate by giving it meaning. Surviving long enough to see her baby into the world safely. She even refused pain medication, and the fact that she sweated profusely in a comfortable room meant to me that she fought this pain constantly. Otherwise, she seemed to be at peace.

One day I got a call at work from her boyfriend, Phil, asking me to come to her room that evening. He wouldn't tell me what it was about, but when I got there, I found him, a couple people I didn't know who turned out to be friends of Phil and Elize, Elize herself, of course, and an elderly man who turned out to be a Justice of the Peace. I had been invited to a deathbed wedding.

Somehow, Elize, who had been on a steady decline had pulled herself together, and with the help of a friend who does it professionally, her makeup and hair were befitting a bride. I don't know how the Justice got through the service without his voice quavering, for clearly he was about as affected by the situation as the rest of us, who were having the hardest time holding back tears. Perhaps it was Elize looking sternly around the room and saying "Now now, don't ruin the happiest day of my life with tears before we even take our vows."

We got through the service and once they were pronounced man and wife, then, as Phil took his wedding kiss, the floodgates opened and tears were practically filling the air as well our eyes. I've been to a few weddings, but this one was uniquely poignant and emotional.

Those present were invited to join in a small reception there in the room, where we had some champagne, carrot cake, and finally some coffee.

Because of her delicate and precarious condition, Elize was allowed visitors almost anytime and in any reasonable number. Phil and one other person could be with her 24 hours a day, and sometimes I'd been that other person. Mainly she would sleep and I would read and doze off in my chair, for I often had to go to work the following morning after spending the entire night there.

This night, Elize thanked us all for coming and wished us all well. For many of them, they knew this was really a last good-bye and not a till-we-meet-again, so the good-byes were long and emotional, though everyone tried vainly not to overdo it. I heard "I'm praying for you" a lot, which was nice, though Elize, like me, had never been a believer.

I was last and while Phil was occupied bidding farewell to a friend who was leaving, she furtively handed me a sealed envelope, the smaller letter size, which said, "My dearest Phil" on the face. She asked me to hide it quickly and to give it to him once she was gone. I slipped it into my purse took one of her hands in both of mine, and kissed her on the forehead. "I promise," I said. "You'll know when the time is right," she said, and she said it as if she really did know that I would know when the time was right. There was no doubt in her voice at all. No further instructions at all. Of course that felt just a bit strange.

A few days go by and I receive a text telling me that Elize had given birth and to come quick for there was a surprise.

Had Elize miraculously turned the corner on her cancer? That was almost too much to wish for. Riding public transit to the hospital was the purest of torture, though I got through it by calling Kelsey to tell her I'd be coming in late or perhaps not at all that day. And then I called my best friend, Gina, and Cliff, my brother to tell them the good news.

As soon as I walked in, I had to wonder if perhaps this was the "something wonderful" to which Clair had referred that last night she had possessed Elize's body and promised that despite the fact that she would never speak through Elize again, something wonderful would happen. For there, in Elize's arms were not one but two babies. As soon as I saw them, Phil said. "Twins were not in the forecast. Elize even had sonograms. Early on, admittedly, but they never detected two babies.

More joy was in her eyes than you can imagine as she said, "Twin girls."

I'm afraid that at that moment I couldn't help myself. I sat down as my eyes filled and I fished around in my purse for some tissue. But there's always tissue in a hospital room and soon Phil handed me a box.

He said, "When I first saw them, I was speechless, and when they were both girls..." He didn't finish. Didn't have to. But then he added, "Elize seemed hardly surprised at all." She just smiled with a Cheshire Cat-like grin.

Elize offered to let me hold them. "Both of them?" I asked. "Sure. They're very well-behaved. They do little but sleep so far. Of course I've only had them a few hours."

I spent the next two days with her almost constantly, along with Phil. I was there the moment she slipped away. Phil, in tears, gave her one last kiss before the nurses covered her with a sheet.

During those days, the two babies were in the room with her constantly and she held them almost every waking minute. This was the only time I detected any regrets on her part, no doubt over the fact that she would be unable to raise them.

After her passing, almost the first thing Phil said was "Now I need to figure out about the girls. What to do..."

Knowing little or nothing about babies, I told him I'd help him through with as much time as I could give.

During that time, Phil named the girls Cheri (pronounced like "sherry") and Amie (pronounced like "Amy").

And that, in part, is why I haven't been around much lately. I've been exhausted by working my regular work schedule while spending about four hours with the little girls three or four evenings a week. He has a couple other friend helping. He now has to work ever so much harder, with two little babies to feed and clothe and provide shelter for.

A few days ago Phil invited me to have lunch with him, so I told Kelsey my lunch break might go a bit long and Phil and I met at a little coffee shop near work that also has great soup and sandwiches and, thankfully, is a quiet place to talk.

After some small talk, Phil told me that for about a day before she died, Elize slept almost constantly. "I was afraid she was in a coma except that the doctors looked at her readings to say that, no, she was just sleeping or resting as her body used up the last of its dwindling resources to fight off the cancer.

"Just before she died," he continued, "she said the strangest things. She said, for example that the night before our wedding, in her sleep, she had met Clair who showed her the future, and that each night since she and Clair had seen more things, and that as a result she knew our babies would grow up to become talented and good women and that I would marry someone we both knew and that I would be happy. She also said she had seen me looking at photos from our times together and that she knew I would miss her tremendously."

Phil could fight off weeping no longer and used his table napkin to dry his eyes.

"She also said that she knew what I was thinking: that it was all a dream and wishful thinking and that there was nothing to it, so that she would prove it to me sometime after she was gone."

Elize was right. I would know the moment to give Phil the envelope she had slipped to me on their wedding day.

Now it was my eyes filling with tears as I picked up my purse from the floor and extracted the envelope, handing it to him with the words, "Elize said I would know when to give you this."

"When...?" "On the day you two were married. While you were saying good-bye to one of the wedding guests. She told me to wait until after she was gone and that she knew I'd know when to give it to you. And she said that as though she really knew I would know. I swear, I have no idea what's inside. She told me nothing."

He looked at the addressing and said, "Well, that is definitely her hand. No one writes quite like her."

He opened it and read it. I could see from across the table that it had just a three words, but between her idiosyncratic script and the distance, I couldn't make it out until he rotated it and pushed it my way, saying, "This is impossible."

I looked at the note. All it said was "Cheri and Amie."

I saw two movies recently and they could hardly be more different. Yet, I enjoyed both.

Paranormal Activity: I remember waiting and waiting through all the hype for The Blair Witch Project, only to walk out of the theater saying, "Is that all?" Probably the most brilliant viral marketing campaign ever led up to a movie that bored me silly with a bunch of bad actors using "fuck" and "motherfucker" and other expletives 2 and 3 times per sentence. They talked just like my slacker classmates. Well, contrast it with the rather quiet word of mouth for Paranormal Activity. Both movies were done in the handheld camera style, so if jiggly camera work is likely to leave your lunch in your lap, don't see it, but if you can tolerate nearly 2 hours of mostly handheld camera work (the rest is mostly grainy stationary camera of their bedroom), you can expect an experience which is almost unheard of anymore: a really scary movie almost totally devoid of the standard horror clichés. This is one movie I think you'll enjoy more in a crowded theater with a friend, not at home on TV. Rating: A.

The Invention of Lying: This is one of those "in a world where" movies, only it's far less cliché-ridden than any one of those fantasy or sci-fi movies. So, in a world where everyone always tells the truth and says exactly what's on his or her mind, poor Ricky Gervais (of British The Office fame), a slightly pudgy nebbish, hankers for the love of Jennifer Garner. She, by her own and everyone else's assessment, is way out of his league. When he is fired from his job and is about to be evicted, he goes to the bank to empty his account and tells the first lie in the history of the world. He has only $300 in his account but needs $900 to pay his rent. He discovers that when he insists that he must have $900 there, the teller adjusts his account and gives him $900! His experimenting with lying shows him how to be rich and successful. Successful even with his lady love. All goes well until he is called to his mother's bedside where he tells her a comforting lie that transforms the entire world. Rating: B-.

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Monday, September 28, 2009
Some Thoughts On Recent Movies

In order to keep the quality and length of my stories up, I can't write them much more frequently than about once a month, and considering they are about short story length, well, how many other writers are anywhere near that productive?

Still, in order to give you more frequent updates and to keep you coming back, I'm going to try to have fairly frequent feature updates like movie reviews, book reviews, and commentaries of various sorts.

Here are some thoughts on some recent movies. Your opinions in reply are certainly welcome:

District 9: Suppose an alien spacecraft were to become stalled over South Africa. Suppose the aliens end up on earth in slums eerily similar to the ones that existed in South Africa when apartheid was in effect, with the insect-like aliens living behind a segregational wall of concrete and barbed wire. I went with Mandy and we both found the movie so unrelentingly unpleasant that we left after watching less than an hour. Yes, I get it: it carries lessons about racism and tolerance told in a metaphorical way. So what? I felt like I'd spent 45 minutes in a dumpster and when we stepped out into the fresh night air...what a relief! Rating: D.

500 Days of Summer: Of course, I have the hots for Zooey Deschanel, so just spending 2 hours with her on the screen a good deal of the time is a treat. At first glance you might think of this movie as a love story. It's not. Rather, it's something of a deconstruction of a relationship, and a very realistic one, as the male protagonist discovers over and over again that his love interest is just beyond his reach simply because she has a mind of her own. The last scene involves a punchline which had me giggling with glee. Rating: B.

Moon: I think Sam Rockwell is cute. I've loved him in just about every movie I've seen him in. In this movie, which is almost a one-man show, he is the lone worker in a mining operation on the Moon. It practically runs itself, so he has plenty of time to read, watch videos, and...go nuts. Which is what he thinks is happening when there is an accident and he finds a man in the wreck who looks an awful lot like himself. What could that mean? Rating: A-.

Pandorum: It was said that Alien was a haunted house movie set on a space ship. This is more like a zombie movie set on a space ship, except that the zombies are quick. Two men come out of cryo-sleep with no memory at first of who they are or what their mission is. As things become clearer, they start to explore their spacecraft, discovering that they are not alone, and that the ship is populated with both friends and enemies. The problem: it isn't always clear which is which. Rating: B-.

Surrogates: "In a world..." Yes, it's one of those. In the near future, people stay at home and let cyborgs go out and have the fun. Why? Because the cyborgs take all the risks and you feel none of the pain. Also, you can have a cyborg who is physically perfect with none of your wrinkles, scars, or bald spots. Unfortunately, some terrorist has found a way to kill the cyborg's controller through the link with the cyborg. I have a soft spot (wet spot?) for Bruce Willis, and he's very good in this B Movie. Rating: B.

The Informant: A man comes to the FBI as a whistle-blower alleging price-fixing and other business crimes. As he proves the truth of his allegations by recording his meetings on video and audio tape, it gradually becomes clear that he is something of a loose cannon as well, and perhaps has a tendency to shave the truth a bit. This "based on a true story" movie rapidly becomes hilarious. Matt Damon gained 30 lb. and wears a goofy wig. Not exactly an Oscar-worthy performance, but it's up there: Rating: B.

Love Happens: Okay. I don't get the people who say Jennifer Aniston has a horse face. I think she's very pretty. This chick flick is everything a chick flick should be: wounded guy who is a widower, girl who has a history of falling for bad boys. Some cliches work. This is an example of one that does. Aaron Eckhart is super-hot (remember him from the last Batman movie?). Martin Sheen has a key minor roll (I've always liked him, too). Rating: B.

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Monday, September 14, 2009
Two Shitty Situations And One Angry Fuck

Guys! You can't live with 'em and you can't murder 'em. (Not legally, anyway.)

Okay, you're thinking, what has Jill so frikken pissed off? If you're thinking it has something to do with my new guy, Rolly, you're absolutely right. And it's not just one thing, it's two. And to make matters worse, I had to find out both things from my roomie, Mandy.

But let me backtrack a bit. If you've been following me for a while, you know that Gina is my best friend. We've been buddies and bedpartners ever since we went through puberty together. She's the nicest person I know. Kind, generous to a fault, and a cute and tiny little gal. She looks childlike. She'll be carded well into her 30's I think.

Well, after spending a good deal of time with our mutual friend, Belinda, in Como, Italy, she finally came home to be with her beau, Ray. But she promised to come and visit me as well, and it finally happened.

She came about two weeks after I got involved with Rolly and shared my bed. Our first night back together we had some fantastic reunion sex. And we fucked again in the a.m. before getting up and showering together. I could tell that Mandy, my friend and roomie (who I have sex with from time to time), was feeling a bit on the outs, like a fifth wheel, so with Gina's consent, we did some threesomes to make Mandy feel included.

Mandy, like Belinda, is so attractive that it's hard for women to resist her, much less men. It's not just her beauty, but also the fact that she is easy to get along with. She's almost as nice as Gina.

I wanted Gina to meet Rolly, and so Rolly was invited for a homemade dinner. Gina makes a killer spaghetti sauce and Mandy kicks ass in the dessert department. All I had to do was buy a loaf of Ciabatta and supply a big jug of cheap California Chianti.

Rolly showed and was introduced to my friends. Mandy, whose pie had been made beforehand, was left with Rolly while Gina and I did our things in the kitchen.

Rolly had a gig that evening so could only stay for a couple hours. We ate a delicious spaghetti and meatballs dinner with my own Italian salad and wine. I thought all went well. We talked quite a bit about music since all four of us are music lovers and since Rolly and I are both very close to being human encyclopedias of artists and tunes.

After he left, we all went into the kitchen and worked to clean dishes and tidy up. Gina was bubbly and fun but Mandy seemed a bit down.

"What's wrong, honey?" I asked, and she said she was just feeling a little under the weather and wanted to go to bed a bit early. So, at around 9 p.m. she popped into her room. Gina and I lookeed at each other and shrugged. We had been looking forward to some serious sex with Mandy being the occasional main course, but seemingly it was not to be.

"I hope it's not that swine flu thing," Gina said, for it was all in the news about then. "She didn't look feverish," I replied.

Gina and I went to bed, made love, and since I had to go to work the next day, I gave her a map of the city and told her some of the things she might see during the day. She took the tram into town with me until we got to a stop that made a good starting point for her walking tour. She got off, I went to work, and didn't see her again until I got home from work about 5:45 in the evening.

When I got there, Gina was there, as expected, and so was Mandy, who had had the day off (I work a normal M-F, 8-5, but she's in the hotel industry and works a varying scheduled that changes from week to week. But typically, her days off fall on at least one weekday every week. This happened to be one of those days.

There was something odd in the air. I could feel it. Something a bit "off." I said nothing, knowing that Gina would eventually make sure I knew anything I needed to know.

I changed from my business clothes into a shirt and jeans. Now I matched their casual attire. Gina offered to take us to a nice restaurant and asked for some suggestions. We ended up going to Jake's Grill, a walk of about 20 minutes. On the way, Gina filled me in on what she had done during the day, a large portion of which had been devoted to exploring Portland's famous bookstore, Powell's. To anyone who likes books, it's like walking to a Cotton Candy Kingdom of Delights.

Gina is rich, so money is never any object, and she makes clear that you can order anything you like on the menu. Even so, the pot roast there is so perfectly done, it's about as delicious as a perfectly done steak almost anywhere else. However, I had neither steak nor pot roast. Rather, venison was on the menu that day (their menu changes daily with some dishes always being there, like prime rib or tenderloin, but other dishes showing up based on availability or seasonality. Obviously, seafood is very much done based on availability. I imagine game dishes are seasonal. Gina and Mandy both had tenderloins, which Jake's does to perfection, but after tasting my venison, they said they had been a little less conservative when they ordered.

All during dinner, Mandy had contributed little to the conversation. In fact, she'd hardly said a word all evening. After dinner, we all had coffee and flan. Gina, who can read me like a book, knew that I sensed something was up, and so she broke the ice.

"When I got back in the late afternoon, Mandy wanted to have a talk. She told me something I think you need to hear."

Mandy hesitated, but finally looked me in the eye and said, "Rolly has been a little inappropriate with me." I asked, "What do you mean?...sexually?" "No," but he seemed a little overly curious about me, I thought, and while you guys were in the kitchen, he proposed we should have lunch sometime."

It took me a minute or so to process that. It's not like he had asked her out on a date, on the one hand, and we weren't going steady or anything, but on the other hand, he had more or less done it behind my back. And why would he want to establish a separate friendship with one of my best friends? If not for some nefarious reason, that is.

Gina jumped in again, saying "He called her while I was there." "He knew today was my day off and thought I'd be home alone," Mandy added. Gina said, "She put it on speakerphone and I listened in. he proposed they have lunch tomorrow. Mandy turned him down and said it didn't feel right to her and that she didn't want him calling her anymore." Mandy said, "I told him that you are my friend and that I would never meet him behind your back. He said that it didn't matter, because he was going off to school in a few weeks and that he didn't want to maintain a long-distance relationship anyway, with you or anyone else."

I can't really express how hurt I was. Initially, I wanted to defend him, but that would have had to imply that Mandy had led him on in some way, but one look at her told me she was the innocent party, a victim in this situation along with me.

Gina started to say something but I put my hand up to stop her. Looking at Mandy, she said, "Let's give Jill a little time to process it."

We drank coffee silently for a few minutes as I tried to fight off tears. I thought maybe I'd found The One, but he was starting to look like just another guy. I've had more than my share of "no strings" sex, but Rolly had seemed more of a keeper, and he had acted like one, too. Implying that there were long-term possibilities.

Finally, fighting off tears, I said, "Thanks for telling me." Looking at Mandy I said, "I don't blame you. I know you wouldn't lead him on." She said, "I couldn't live with myself if I did. I couldn't do anything behind your back like that. He's cute and interesting but I cherish our friendship. I could never betray you." Gina, who was sitting next to her gave her a hug, adding "She means it. I could see the pain she was feeling as she talked to him."

Seeing that I wasn't angry with her, Mandy came alive. It was as if a weight had been taken off her shoulders. Now, I was the quiet one as we walked home. Gina held my hand, squeezing it from time to time and looking into my eyes, which were half-filled with tears.

Finally, she pulled me into the recessed doorway of a closed shop and gave me a big Gina hug. That was it: I burst into tears. "He never told me he was going to be leaving. I wonder when he was planning on telling me that?" Mandy shook her head in disgust as she turned it into a group hug.

"Men are such dogs," said Mandy. Yeah, a lot of them are, though both Gina and I have men in our lives who are everything but dogs: her guy Ray and for me, my dad.

My cell rang just as I got home. It was...guess who? I sent him to voicemail. I didn't want to have to deal with him just yet. His message implied he assumed I knew nothing.

In email I acknowledged his call and invited him to have lunch with me. We met at a nearby lunch cart where we both got some curry. There is an apartment nearby with a courtyard and some shaded grass.

I wasted no time bringing up the fact that he'd soon be leaving town. He said (lying) that he thought he'd told me. I pretended to be somewhat placated, because the main concern was not respecting basic limits by attempting to make a move on a very good friend.

"You know," I said, "I'm actually a bit more concerned about your attempt to see Mandy apart from me." He immediately went to the jealousy accusation. I stopped him mid-accusation with "This isn't about jealousy. This is about being open with each other. It's about respecting certain limits that most people understand and respect."

"I just talked to her," he started to say. I shushed him by holding my palm up and said, "When you called Mandy yesterday afternoon, you were on speakerphone. Gina listened in."

"So, you're spying on me," he said. I rolled my eyes and said, "Mandy found your behavior a little unnerving the other night when we had you over for dinner. She felt you were getting a little too chummy in ways that would make me uncomfortable. You see, she cares about me."

By this time, it was probably clear to him that it was over. That I had turned on him. He made a few feeble efforts to turn things around, and so when we parted at the end of my lunch hour, it was more "Fare thee well" than "Till we meet again." Frankly, I didn't want to see him again.

Ever.

When I got back home after work, Gina was waiting for me. Mandy had gone to work already. I told Gina what happened and she did her best to make me feel good, but that was hard going even for her. I'd only known the guy several weeks but I had been thinking we had a future. At this point, I liked my ex-boyfriend Eric much more. At least we had grown apart and the break-up was somewhat mutual. I wanted to feel the victim but, hell, I'm a grownup and I know that sometimes life sucks. And when it really sucks, it generally has to do with death or...guys.

Don't worry, there's some red-hot sex coming up, but at the mention of death, there was another event of note recently, and it happened that very night.

Normally, when I go to bed I turn the phone off, largely because mom doesn't seem to remember that we live in different time zones. I'm no longer a 10 minute drive away. But that night I forgot. So, here it is 2:45 a.m. in the middle of the night with a work day ahead of me, and the phone rings.

"Am I speaking with (pause) Miss Jill Hill?" With an irritated yawn I said, "Yes, it is and you are aware that it's almost 3 a.m.?" turning a statement into a question. "Yes, miss, but Gene told me to call you in case he died. I thought you'd want to know as soon as possible."

Gene, a family friend. Subject of my "Jilly Jelly Girl" story. An alcoholic, drug user, and all around substance abuser. At one time, he was a rising star in the world of saxophone jazz. Then he disappeared into the fog of drug abuse, only to show up here in a Portland doorway where we (my visiting family and I) dried him out and thought we had set him on the path to recovery, only to have him opt out. When you look up self-destructive in the dictionary, as they say...

I asked about the circumstances and learned that Gene had not been seen in a few days and that a telltale odor around his room's door had led him (the gentleman on the phone) to call the police to do a welfare check. They opened the door to his room, went in, and quickly returned, immediately calling in the need for the coroner's office to come and pick up the body.

"I have something he gave me to give you in case this happened. It's an envelope." I thought for a moment and realized I'd never get back to sleep, so I said I'd be there as soon as I could get a taxi.

I'd never been to this "hotel" before, or any flophouse, for that matter. I was surprised to find myself in a hermetically sealed antechamber, which might make it sound luxurious. No the sickly green paint was peeling and there was a distinct urine-mixed-with-tobacco aroma permeating the air. On one side was a lumpy-cushioned beat-up old couch, with a lumpy-looking beat-up-looking old man sitting on it. Across from it was what looked like an old school ticket seller's window, but with a sliding drawer beneath it instead of the half-circle cutout.

A rotund young man, prematurely balding and with a goatee, saw me through the glass and waddled over to the window. A small speaker overhead came alive with a chirp and he said, "You Jill Hill?" I nodded a yes. "Got some ID?" I showed him my Ohio Driver's License through the glass (I don't have a car her in Oregon, so I've been in no hurry to get an Oregon license.)

It was a manila envelope of the size you can put 8.5x11 paper in without folding it. I indicated my thanks with a gesture and returned to the taxi waiting outside, which took me home.

Gina was back in bed, asleep. While I was gone, Mandy was there watching TV, her shift at the hotel over. I had scared her shitless when I opened the door because she had no idea what was going on and at first thought it must be some sort of intruder. Once she calmed down, I told her what was going on.

After hanging up my coat, I sat down on the couch and we both stared at the envelope. Finally she said, "Aren't you going to open it." "Yeah," I said, admitting "I'm a bit afraid of what might be on the inside." "Like what?" she asked.

"Okay," I said as I pinched the small metal butterfly closure, releasing the flap. Inside was a smaller envelope which said its contents were for my dad.

Now, my mother is an early riser. My father, as a working musician, keeps a different (meaning later) schedule. He typically gets up around 10 a.m. Mom was really sad to hear the news, but since dad had gotten in particularly late, and had had but two hours of sleep she said, "He'll be mad at me for not waking him up, but daddy needs his sleep," she said. And in my mind's eye I could see him furrow his brows and bark at her turned back. I could also see her grinning, knowing that his next words would be something about eggs or pancakes. Forgetting Gene momentarily, I chuckled to myself.

I thought about taking the next two days off (this all happened on a Wednesday night), and I'm sure Kelsey would have let me, but I really had nothing to do. I got permission to come in a little late, depending upon when dad called. He called around 7:15, while I was drying off from my morning shower. Mandy answered the phone and brought it in to me.

"Hi, dad. You heard the news?" "Yeah. Sad. I'm going to come out. Use some frequent flyer miles. I'd love to fly out today, but it'll probably be on the weekend."'

I told him about the contents of the big envelope and he said I'd better read him the contents of the little envelope. It said simply:

If you're reading this, I'm dead. These are my wishes: I want (my father's name) to be my executor. I want my body donated to medical science. I bequeath all of my assets and possessions to (my father's name) on the condition that any profits deriving from my musical compositions be given to benefit musicians fighting addiction.

At the bottom was the word "US Bank" with what appeared to be an account number of some sort. There was a notation underneath: "You will know what to do with it."

"I wonder what he means by that, dad?" "I suppose I'll know once I see what it is." We did a little small talk, and dad said he'd start arranging a flight and let me know. I got to work not even 15 minutes late.

Later in the day, I got an e-mail from my father with his itinerary. He'd be coming in on Sunday evening, so Monday we'd find out what the US Bank number was all about.

He mentioned something about staying at The Governor Hotel again, but knowing that he had probably had to cancel a couple gigs and that the trip involved many unplanned-for expenses, so I invited him to stay with us. Gina would love to have her surrogate daddy around and I was sure Mandy would like him as well.

* * * * *

Amazingly, I still had never been to the Oregon Coast, so I proposed that Gina and I drive there and spend the night in a coastal town. I left it to her to make arrangements for us, and she offered to pay, since I was hosting her, which was just fine with me.

I didn't even get to go home after work that Friday. Gina had rented a car and packed a selection of clothes and toiletries. I looked it all over and it seemed she had thought of everything. So...off we went.

It was a gorgeous drive through winding mountain roads for about an hour and a half, and then another half hour or so on the road that runs along the coast until we arrived at a small hotel right on the beach. It was essentially a bed & breakfast. Gina said we only got it due to a cancellation, which I can believe. A place like this is probably booked months in advance.

The attendant at the desk was a guy, about 19 or 20, who explained that he was minding the store, as it were, while his parents were celebrating their anniversary in Acapulco. He was always stopping to think what to do next. Gina and I were constantly nudging each other, for he was hot. Gina is committed to Ray and couldn't act on any impulses she was feeling, but given my recent breakup, she was definitely trying to put me on the mend, reminding me that I was attractive and that there were other men I could have if I wanted them.

While we had been assigned a specific suite, the brochure explained that each room had its own separate decor. Each had a large bathroom and an ocean view. It looked like a Victorian home that had been converted into a b&b, but in fact it had been designed for its purpose from the ground up. None of the windows facing the street were room windows, but either office or hallway windows. And on the ocean side, each room had a balcony, and all of the balconies were skillfully designed so that at least part of the balcony offered complete nude sunbathing privacy, not that it was often warm enough for nude sunbathing.

We unpacked our bags and got advice from the cutie at the font counter as to where to go for a meal, and off we went on foot. Ocean air has its own smell and despite being hundreds of feet from the crashing waves, occasionally we received a puff of mist along with gusts of wind, for it was very windy.

We had a wonderful dinner of salmon, baked potato, and salad, which we consumed along with beer brewed in a coastal microbrewery. We got some coffee just as the nearby coffee shop was about to close, and walked back to the hotel. Gina and I watched some HBO for a while, until almost midnight. Gina wanted to sleep but I had an hour or two more in me, so I left her, remembering that there was a TV in the common area on the main floor, across from the dining area.

The cute guy was there in the common area when I got there. He was watching a movie which had just started. It was one I hadn't seen, so, after getting a drink from the nearby pop machine, I sat down. Politely, he asked if this movie was okay or if I wanted to see something else. I told him it was fine with me and that I might not even make it to the end anyway.

His name is Timothy. We watched for a half hour or so until I felt a need to visit the ladies room. He used his digital VCR to pause the movie for me, but when I returned, he said something and I said something and soon we were involved in a conversation about ourselves. He was on summer vacation from school. He was attending Oregon State and wants to be an attorney. Wants to help the poor and disadvantaged.

I asked some questions about the hotel and, after trotting off to the office, he returned with a thick scrapbook. We spent maybe 15 minutes looking at pictures of his family first, and then pictures of the coast, and finally photos of the hotel in various stages of construction. Sometime during the scrapbook I started to feel that feeling in the panties area a girl feels when her body is telling her to mate.

So, I was the one who made the first move, grabbing a furtive kiss when an opportunity arose. At first it was lips only, but soon his tongue was teasing my lips. I opened my mouth and very soon it was open-mouth kissing. And boy did he know how to kiss! A guy can be hot as hell, but if he can't kiss, then he becomes a lot less attractive.

I was uncommonly horny, so I took the lead. Setting the book down on the floor, I pushed him onto his back and, continued kissing. Meanwhile, I ground my pelvis into his and soon he was grinding back.

Kissing was pleasant, but I wanted some cock, so I got up and sat on my heels, opening up his pants and getting his hard-on out. Neither big nor small, it was as hard as a cock can get.

Most girls love sucking cock. I'm not exactly sure I can explain why. Most of us like taking a cumshot in the mouth as well, which is even harder to explain, other than to say it's exciting. But taking another person's bodily fluid in the mouth would normally be disgusting. Snot? Blood? Pee? (well pee isn't so bad...I've done that). Anyway, I was sucking his dick like crazy and really wanted him to drop his wad in my mouth, when he said, "Let's fuck."

Well, you can't have sex with someone and have it all be about you, and fucking didn't sound too bad, and so I stripped until all I was wearing was socks and shoes. I got onto my back and soon we were going at it missionary style. His cock being average size, he was a surprisingly good lay, mainly because he was a pile-driving fool, and banged the shit out of me for a good fifteen minutes, taking me almost to orgasm many times.

At last, I wanted dessert, so I asked him if he'd like to fuck my ass. He looked at me blankly, and said, "I've never done it, but..." "Let me be your first, then." "But I thought girls don't like it(?)" "Haha," I said, "the ones who don't really try it or give it a chance. It's my favorite!" His eyes lit up and so I knelt on the floor, presenting my anus and laying my upper body down on the cushion.

"Wet me with spit first and wet your dick. I was wishing I'd brought some lube down, but in fact what was so exciting about this was the total spontaneity of it. It was like meeting a guy in a bar and then fuckng the life out of him in the back alley, and then leaving without ever knowing his name, for I had no intention of getting involved so soon after being hurt by Rolly.

Now, the key to enjoying anal sex is to masturbate at the same time, for it's the combination of the two which is so exciting. What does it feel like? Kind of like when you are a little constipated and are passing a big turd. I know that doesn't sound very exciting when put that way but...well, you just gotta try it. I think it's the best.

He spat on my asshole and teased it with his prick, wetting it with precum. When I felt his glans on my anus, pressing, I said, "Now just take it easy; don't hurry. Give my asshole a chance to stop resisting." I'm used to anal sex, so my sphincter resists only momentarily, and soon he was sliding in and out of me, fucking my ass almost as hard as as he had my pussy.

Man that felt good, but as time went by I got drier and drier. Luckily, he finally came, giving me a creampie, which he politely rubbed off my asshole with a tissue from the nearby box.

After dressing again, we laid down on the couch and finished the movie.

The next day, Gina and I explored the coast all day long, returning to the hotel after dark, spending a second night in the hotel before returning to Portland the following morning.

As for the boy, after our fuck, I was polite and friendly to him, but there was no more sex. I had got that angry, revenge sex out of my system.

Sunday evening, dad would be coming into town and on Monday we'd find out what was going on at the bank.

My heart leapt at the thought of seeing daddy, still, and possibly forever, the #1 man in my life. Even more so after Rolly.

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Complete List Of Stories
In The Order They Were Written

I have been realizing that the blog has developed, shall we say, a navigation issue as it has grown. In order to make it easier to get around, I've created a chart listing the stories by name and in the order they were written. The day may come in the future when every story name here will directly link to that story, but for now, there are links which will take you to that page. When you go to each page, bear in mind that they are blog pages with the oldest story at the bottom and the newest one at the top. In other words, the reverse of the order they are listed here. For example, "The Story Of The Sad Girl" on Page 2 is the second story from the bottom of the page, not the second from the top. To go directly to a particular page click on the link on the story list page. Click HERE for a complete story list