Suburb Circumstances

PREFACE: What if? – I thought – certain characters of mine (from different stories) were, by circumstance, to be brought together in close proximity? All so different – how would they accommodate each other? Thus below are Gerald Jr. & Jory-Beau from “The Alexia Chronicles,” Oscar, Clyde, Charley, & Alice from my “Vignettes,” and Edwin & Dalton from my novel “Young Edwin.” Cameo appearances are made, too, but harmlessly – all’s in good fun if you like sexy, anal-oriented situations.

DEDICATION: To my ever-encouraging friend known widely as MCVT, whose amazing stories will begin to appear here, on gaydemon.com, in the weeks and months ahead.

SUBURB CIRCUMSTANCES

“Wonderful as always,” Jory-Beau stretched with pleasure. All five-feet seven-inches of his muscle-rippled body twisted among the sheets.

Gerald, whose ‘submarine’ had just surfaced from its diving maneuvers in the depths between his roommate’s rock-hard mounds, wiped its glistening length. He grinned, “You always are. I love Sunday mornings. No need to rush.”

“Don’t just stand there. Make us oatmeal like last time, please, with apple sauce and raisins?”

“Ask like that and I’ll give you anything you want for breakfast. More of this?”

“After lunch. Wait! After church.”

From the kitchen, Gerald sounded miffed. “What? Why would we go to church?” A pan rattled. Water ran. The refrigerator door opened and shut. A jar’s lid was banged on the countertop to loosen it.

“Oscar’s singing a solo, don’t you remember? His mom invited us.”

“Ave Maria again? We’ve heard it twice. Anyway, you know I can’t stand that kid, the way he stares.”

“If you’d wear briefs, he wouldn’t notice. Anyway, it’s Panis Angelicus, his new solo.”

“I’m sorry we ever met that pushy woman and her brat. Coffee’s brewing. Let’s take a shower.”

“Yes!”

*

Luckily recipients of scholarships at Capitol City’s Community College and with support from home, Gerald Jr. and Jory-Beau had moved into one side of a duplex on a nice residential street. Life in their one-room apartment for a year had cramped growing social lives, although the freedom of not being under parental housewives’ scrutiny back in rural Alexia counted for something.

Settling in would take a while and some getting used to.

“Gosh, I like this place.”

“Me, too.”

“So glad we took it.”

“Uh-oh, somebody’s heading our way – with a watermelon. A woman.”

Jory-Beau peeked through the blinds. “Dang-nation, she does have a watermelon.”

“I’ve got on more than you, I’ll go to the door. There’s the ding-dong.”

“Good morning, my name’s Alice.” She went on brightly, “I’m from our neighborhood Welcome Wagon. You just moved in. Here, take this. It’s fresh from the farm.”

Gerald – who had dropped ‘Jr.’ – stared as she pushed her way inside before he would take the sun-warm, fruity dirigible. Heavy in his arms, he thanked her and headed for the kitchen.

“Nice! You fellows unpacked yet? I guess not, what with all those boxes over there.”

“Hi, I’m Jory-Beau. I live here, too.”

Alice glowed, “My, aren’t you a sight! Are those mail-order muscles?

“No ma’am, just me.” He tugged at his t-shirt and sweatpants.

She verged on launching into questions that neighbors always want answers to from newbies. But six-foot-tall Gerald got the jump on her. “Do you live nearby?”

“Why yes,” Alice blinked. “My son Clyde and I are at the end of this block on the other side.”

“Who else should we like to know about, if you please?”

“Can’t we sit? I can tell you about everybody.”

“Sorry, but the sofa’s covered up and our chairs are still in their packing. See over there. If you’d rather some other time – maybe next week?”

“No, this is fine. I’ll stand. Mrs. Schwartz, she’s a divorcee, lives next to us. Big gossip. Mrs. Menendez-Finklestein and her boy Oscar have the third house. They’re Methodists. He sings like a bird at their church, the Baptist church, even the Presbyterian. You must hear Oscar. Over there is where my nephew Charley lives with his mom, my sister Marge. She’s divorced, too. She works long hours so Charley’s often on his own, only he’s made friends with the neighborhood bachelor, whose name I always forget. All the boys like him. I do, too. His is the last house. Say, you guys, are you in college or something? Do you date?”

“We do,” said Jory-Beau, who stopped short of any explanation.

Gerald put out an arm toward the open door, “Tell you what, Alice, when we’re set up a bit better, we’ll ask you for coffee and sweet rolls. We want to fit right in.”

His tone packed her off.

Over a shoulder, Alice called, “I’ll introduce you to everyone and will be glad to take you to church on Sunday to hear Oscar. He’s doing everybody’s favorite, Ave Maria.”

They waved.

*

Shoulders squared, Gerald walked across to knock on the unnamed man’s door.

A cautious eye looked out. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Gerald from over there,” he pointed back. “My roommate and I would like to meet you. Can you come?”

The door cracked, “Now?”

“If you’re not busy, that is. We’re new here, as you may have noticed, and we’d like to get acquainted.”

“Is Alice anywhere out there? I saw her at your door.”

“God, no. What’s with her and those other snoopy mothers? If you know something, please tell us. How about it?”

“I will if you lock your door while I visit.”

Gerald looked both ways, assured himself that the coast was clear, and guided the guy swiftly to Jory-Beau’s big-smile welcome.

“Man-oh-man, forgive me for asking, but are you getting enough sleep? You’ve got circles under your eyes,” Jory-Beau observed, offering a freshly unwrapped chair.

 “It’s nothing. I’m just over-worked.”

Bedraggled.

Eyes met with understanding. Jory-Beau went into the kitchen when he already had apple-crumb cake heating and coffee perking. Aromas drifted to the living room where Gerald pulled up another wrapping-free chair and retrieved a knee-level table from its place upside-down on the sofa.

“Sorry about the mess but…”

“…You’re still putting things in order.” He sounded less fraught, less jumpy. “You did lock your door, right?”

“Come on man, you saw me. You can relax.”

“Can I ask you something – personal-like? Really personal?”

“Sure. I’m not hiding anything. Jory-Beau, honey, are we hiding anything?”

“Huh? Refreshments will be there in a minute. You’ll see. I’m not hiding them.”

Gerald thought their guest looked forlorn enough to cry.

“Are you gay? Like lovers?”

“Yes, but you don’t need to fear us. We aren’t predatory. We are a couple, utterly devoted.”

“That’s awful.”

Startled but concerned, Gerald asked – as Jory-Beau juggled plates of steaming apple cake, forks, and napkins then went back for his coffee pot and three mugs – “You aren’t homophobic, are you?”

Affronted for a flash, the answer came back, “Hell, no. I was hoping you were gay, though, so you guys could step in for me. I mean, look at you, handsome as all get-out,” he said to Jory-Beau, “cute as a button, and you,” he looked from Gerald’s sturdy face to the distended bulge between his legs, “with such an endowment. You’d be the answer to my prayers about relief.”

He took his coffee black the way they did and almost choked on a forkful of cake.

“Easy now.” Gerald wanted to understand. “Are you – now you don’t have to tell me – are you having an affair with those women?”

Jory-Beau’s napkin caught the coffee spill.

He laughs like an insane person.

Gerald grabbed the wobbling cup, put it down calmly. “What’s funny?”

Owlish-round eyes glared as he said mechanically, “I’m gay and I’m fucking all three – not the women – their sons. They make me – every day. After school. That’s three fucks a day – each one wanting me to come. In them. Twice on Saturdays – that’s six times in one day! Sunday’s my day off – to recover. I have an office job where I’m tired all the time. I don’t know what to do. If you guys would like to do some hard screwing, they’d go wild to get fresh meat. And it would let me off the hook.”

“Wait, we’ve seen Oscar. Heard him sing. He’s only –what? – barely adolescent, I guess.” Gerald was aghast. “His voice hasn’t changed.”

“Believe me, he’s got a prehensile ass.”

“Are you injured? Need a doctor?”

The moan was alarming.

“Alice took me to one. Dr. Houser. I had to fuck his son, but it was okay. Dougie’s really sweet. Not demanding. If he was the only one I could be with, I’d love him. He wants me to be in charge. With him, it’s so different. He's older, more mature. Not bossy. But he has to sneak over at sunset. Rides his bike. We never have enough time for romance. Oh, I’m saying too much.”

“We’re only college students. What can we do?”

“Thank you, Gerald. You, too,” he lifted his coffee toward Jory-Beau. “I needed to spill my guts.”

You spilled your coffee.

 Refills were offered. Gerald wanted to know how such strange sexual circumstances got started.

“It’s embarrassing. Alice couldn’t get a babysitter for Clyde, so drafted me. At bedtime in his pyjamas, the little bugger came on to me – and I didn’t resist. Anyway, he’d been introduced to sex by some tutor who got in there first…with olive oil. Not sure Clyde would’ve told but – I’m so ashamed – I fell asleep on the couch where Alice found me. And she found the olive oil and…”

“Didn’t she throw a fit?”

“No, because Clyde was a handful even for her. The rascal was super real laid-back for the next few days. Mellow. Only, he blabbed to Oscar and Charley – you know boys can’t keep secrets. Before I knew it, I was their prey. Now, they’re endangering me! I’m a victim.”

Jory-Beau snickered behind a raised hand before helping himself to the last bite of his apple cake. He looked to Gerald for guidance.

For his part, Gerald remained unconvinced. The story seemed, well, overblown. True, he had seen the neighborhood boys glancingly many times. Nothing about them held any interest for him. Sexually? Disgusting. This guy’s some kind of pervert. They twist things around.

*

Gerald closed the door, locked it and leaned back against the jamb – releasing a long sigh of relief. “Thank you for getting rid of him.”

“Just a matter of showing kindness, you know.”

“You were so smooth, taking his elbow and saying you’d walk him safely home.”

“That’s me, Mr. Smooth.”

“Yes, that’s one of the attractive features – smooth skin over muscles – I love.”

Fluttering his lashes, Jory-Beau shucked his t-shirt and flexed his arms. “This skin? These muscles?”

“Those and that other set – under those,” Gerald pointed to side-striped sweatpants.

“Come and get it.”

“Have you finished the project for your art class?”

“No. Have you written your essay for your Social Studies class?”

“No. That’s why we should ‘make whoopee’ now – to get inspiration. Love, you know.”

Jory-Beau’s teeth shone white as snow between his irresistibly kissable lips. “We’re in the Age of Reason. Let’s.”

They did – in the position of their first encounter in Judge Clarence’s house in Alexia.  Good ol’ Judge Clarence had been doing his civic duty by plowing Jory-Beau with all he had.

*

The full account was recorded in THE ALEXIA CHRONICLES thus:

Jory-Beau, muscles and all, had been a protégé of the judge’s coming along after Junior. Neither was aware of the other until the recent Summer. In fact, the morning of July 4, when he could have slept in, Gerald Jr. decided to pay a surprise call on his mentor at home. He strode to the address he knew so well, opened the kitchen door – almost never locked –and walked softy across linoleum and over living room wall-to-wall to the bedroom. Without pause, he pushed on the slightly-ajar door and walked in on a ramrod performance by the Hon. Clarence D.’s frisky dick.

Whoever lay underneath was small enough to be obscured by casually tossed bedclothes. He was moaning in time and pumping his only visible part against clockwork thrusts. Impressed, Gerald thought, “An ass like ivory bowling balls. Looks like….”

He was noticed. No chance for guilt – because, as the judge pummeled deep, he looked over, “Why you’re just in time, Gerald. Jory Beau’s right at the point when he needs what you’ve got.”

“Jory-Beau, that you under there?”

“Hi, Gerald. Been hearin’ ’bout you, ’bout your big one. Wanna lay into me? Judge says I’m a natural talent, only I ain’t been all-the-way, proper-like, yet.”

Not in the least phased, not even winded by the pounding he was receiving, the pint-sized star athlete twanged, “Aw, c’mon, help a friend out.”

Instantly acquiescent, haste apparent, Gerald threw his apparel wildly there and yon. His shirt festooned a chair, his sandals plunked upon the room’s old-fashioned hearth, his pants landed on one of the bedposts, socks on an unlit lamp, and his jockstrap close to Jory Beau’s face. But Jory Beau took no notice of anything except the already risen club-like weapon jutting from his mild-mannered buddy’s body.

“SHIT!”

“Not at all,” the judge said, pulling out. “You’re clean as a whistle.”

Gerald stared.

“Get over here and let me get you ready. New stuff,” he held out an uncapped tube. “Silicone gel. Sure does slick things up. Lasts forever.”

Gerald squeezed eyes and pelvic muscles to avert the onset of feelings that formerly curtailed his pleasure. Lubricious lubrication provided by skilled hands did not distract his attention from the classmate on Judge Clarence’s bed. Jory Beau’s feet and hands cleared away the covers, leaving his chiseled body, spread out face down on a pure white, still tightly-stretched, fitted, cotton sheet.

“Doc-to-Patient, anyone there?” the judge took hold of Gerald’s sensitive scrotum.

“Yes, sir.”

“That one’s real sweet. Take your time,” he spoke as if Jory Beau were out of range. “Go easy, not all at once, y’hear? I’ve got some things to take care of, so mount him careful-like and you’ll both enjoy the ride. Don’t you let loose until he tells you he’s had enough. I mean it.”

In Jory Beau’s direction, he mimicked the boy’s manner of speech, “This ’un’s always rarin’ to go. When you want what he’s got stored up, let him know; postpone his gonad flush – you know what I mean – postpone it as often as you think you can get away with; and, if you want a second load and can stand it, then use your insides. Provoke ’im further. Sport with ’im. He’s yours to play with. Same as you, he needs experience.” For emphasis, he repeated, “Same…as… you.”

Briefly from the doorway, the Hon. Clarence D. added, “Call if you need me.”

*

A few days passed.

On this occasion, Gerald arrived home earlier than usual. He walked from the bus stop toward the duplex he and Jory-Beau resided in – and glimpsed Oscar Luis Menendez-Finkelstein on tiptoes trying to see in a window at their nameless neighbor’s house.

Close enough to speak, Gerald called, “Hello, there. Looking for someone?”

The boy whipped around, anger on apple-cheeked face. Guilt.  In sequence, he saw the tall one who had been at church to hear him sing – the college guy’s handsome face and flopping goodies – and beamed the best of beams. “Yeah. Mom’s worried he may be sick,” he lied. “Alice – you know her, right? – says he’s not been going to work. I was…”

Gerald loomed before little Oscar. “No need to worry. He took some time off for a visit to his relatives. Left night before last. We, my friend and I, went to see him off at the Trailways terminal downtown. He’ll be back in a week or so.” He, too, lied.

“A week or so! Bummer!”

Warned repeatedly against contact with Oscar, Clyde, and Charley by their neighbor, Gerald’s curiosity was piqued now by boy’s odd reaction. More than mere childish disappointment. Hmm.

“Anything wrong?”

“Damn right. Damn!”

“Excuse me, is that language you ought be using?”

“What do you care?” Oscar sassed.

“I don’t.” With contempt in his voice and on his face, Gerald turned, loped away – leaving Oscar where he stood.

Waitafuckingminute! I’m letting him get away. Shitdamnhell!

*

“No kidding?” Sheer disbelief in that.

“No kidding. He’s gone. We’re stuck for prob’ly more than a week.”

“But…”

“Butt is right – yours, mine, and yours.”

Charley’s high-pitched squeak resembled a rodent’s. One in misery.

“Oscar, what are we gonna do? My need started before yours. I was first, remember?”

“Yes, Clyde. And I need to learn the “Queen of the Night” aria for an audition Mom’s lined up. Need dick for that, like before. A lot more – when Mom’s not around.”

“What about me? I’m the one who…who tracked our guy to the tree where he was hiding so we could get him down. I’ve got rights.”

“Charley, would you pipe down? You, too, Clyde. Let me think.”

Oscar, seated on backyard grass across from his buddies, propped elbows on knees, buried hands in plump cheeks, and thought. Breaths audible as he concentrated, one eyebrow lifted, dropped, then both rose.

Bursting with pride, Oscar whistled, “I’ve got it! Listen.”

Clyde and Charley leaned forward.

“If we…”

*

Surveillance provided knowledge. Knowledge provided opportunity. Opportunity provided, well, opportunity – for action by a conspiratorial trio of horny boys. With stealth and a length of rope apiece, Oscar led Charley and Clyde into thick bushes beside their block’s duplex.

They waited. Not long.

Sauntering along from the bus stop with his hard-on stretching obscenely his loose-fitting trousers, Gerald was lost in thoughts of fun ahead with his beloved Jory-Beau. Just as he unlocked their apartment’s front door, a gang of three rushed to push him inside.

What?! 

A loop of rope to each wrist and a shove from behind – quicker than any reaction time – took Gerald to the bed where he was secured, arms out, on his back, another loop around his ankles tying feet to footboard. Darting hands stripped away his belt. Others opened his lower garments and extracted what strained, stiff and awesome.

“Look at that!”

“Don’t gawk! Hold on to it,” Oscar commanded. In a trice, shoes were shed and elastic-waisted pants were slid down to bare his bodacious bottom. A bottle of olive oil was produced adroitly for a palmful to spread where needed – on Gerald’s vertical monster first, on himself last.

He bounded to the bed – and sat carefully. Very carefully. “O” was the syllable that issued from Oscar’s throat, A=440. At each inch of descent, he sang the next note of A-major’s diatonic scale in ascent a full octave, growing to full voice when, Clyde’s hand out of his way, he sank into a cushion of pubic hair, shimmied to produce a trill, and let out a whoop of victory.

Eyes watched – Clyde’s, Charley’s, and still-astonished Gerald’s.

Taut as Jory-Beau that first time at Judge Clarence’s!

Gerald shivered as Oscar rose and fell, singing at the top of his obviously-trained lungs arpeggios, roulades, other scales, and portamenti (swoops from highs to lows, from lows to highs). Novelty held his attention tightly. That of Charley and Clyde, too – mouths gaping.

*

Mrs. Menendez-Finkelstein stood on her front porch listening in rapture as Alice drove up and stopped.

“What’s going on? Is that…?”

“My Oscar,” she clapped her hands, “is getting back in vocal shape.”

Alice gestured, “In there?”

“Yes. Just listen!”

The entire neighborhood can hear.

Mrs. Schwartz poked an inquiring nose out her front door as if smelling something.

Marge joined the group to marvel at new sounds coming from the duplex.

No one noticed the sidewalk approach of bright-faced Jory-Beau – the image of healthy muscularity – until he startled them, “Hi, ladies, what’s happening?”

The female trio glommed onto him.

Quickest, Alice felt shoulders and biceps, saying rather loudly, “Ooh, you must’ve been working out at the gym. My goodness!”

Mrs. Menendez-Finkelstein, a Methodist, could not bring herself to follow suit, but Marge did.

Unaccustomed to such attention, Jory-Beau shuddered at Marge’s touches to his abs, Alice’s to his traps and delts. “Hey, why are you…?”

An almost-operatic high C came from where he lived. Another. His head swiveled. Realization hit. Breaking ranks, he dashed, key in hand, to the duplex door. At the open door to their bedroom, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Oscar, lost in vocalizations, was rodeo-riding his Gerald! And Gerald was tied up!

Gerald’s mouth gaped at Jory-Beau. It managed to croak out, “Take off your clothes. Lie on the floor. These two boys,” he glanced from Charley to Clyde, “need your cock. They can’t take mine.”

Bingo! Both observers, already naked and aroused, small asses in an agitated dither, jockeyed for the olive oil and went to stunned Jory-Beau.

“Please,” said clever Clyde.

“Pretty please,” said charming Charley.

“I’ve never…” Jory-Beau protested. His body language displaying shyness.

“Me neither,” Gerald came in way under Oscar’s newly found high D. “But it’s…different…and great! Ohh! And you can try being on top for a change. Ohh!…Ohh!”

 Against his better judgment, Jory-Beau, recent winner of the Mr. All-County Body Builder title, let the youngest hands ever remove his shoes, socks, outer pants, and jock-strap. The more they admired their discoveries of his perfected anatomy, the more he preened. Oily fingers surrounding his balls and cock convinced.

They belonged to eager Clyde, Alice’s son.

The sight to which he surrendered, however, was little Charley on the rug of braided rags they had bought at Goodwill – stomach down, legs spread, ears covered against Oscar’s ongoing ululations.

“Go on,” Clyde said with a smart smack to Jory-Beau’s butt. “Don’t be afraid. He can take you. So can I. But do him first…so I can watch. Then I’ll be better for you.”

Before making a move, Jory-Beau saw Gerald nod approval.

This is wild!

With one more darting survey of the scene, his mind decided, he hovered, took a push-up position, held himself to hover over Charley - on arms stronger than either boy could imagine.

Clyde took the young man’s perfect cock and, with a few oily strokes, directed it surely.

“Now, Charley. Rear up.”

Charley’s bottom reared a few inches to meet Jory-Beau’s uncertain thrust.

No one heard the squish of escaping air as unoccupied territory filled to capacity.

The sound around them was obliterated by overwhelming satisfaction on Charley’s part and, on Jory-Beau’s, by the prestigious feeling of first-time topping.

Glee was notable as they coupled.

Tremors took over Charley. When they calmed, Clyde drew Jory-Beau away. “There,” he said, “job done. Now for me.”

Charley rolled out of his friend’s way. “Whoa, that was good.” Thence to the bathroom.

Clyde lay back, legs up. “Let’s see what you can do for me,” he tweaked the head of Jory-Beau’s firm stand.

A smooth entry. Jory-Beau was taking to his new role. The moment of submersion closed both fellows’ eyes, it felt so peaceful.

But their peace shattered when Oscar’s voice cracked, becoming a shocked scream.

The sight to see: Gerald had worked free of his poorly-knotted ropes and had seized his aggressor, flipped him to the bed, and was cramming the brat’s bossy butt with everything – every inch – he possessed. “I’ll teach you to take what doesn’t belong to you!”

Oscar’s hoarseness did not disguise his astonishment. This was fucking beyond his wildest dreams. Fucking he would never forget.

Crisis resolved, they thought, Jory-Beau and Clyde resumed coitus with enthusiasm the former had not imagined, the latter had fantasized about. First of the three neighborhood boys to have been deflowered, Clyde had more experience than the others. He knew anal pleasure’s ins and outs from a tutor, then from their neighbor man (Whoo!), now with a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood statue (Whoo-ee!).

What went through his body surpassed Charley’s cute tremors.

Finished, Jory-Beau and Clyde saw Oscar, biting his fist, receive the coup-de-grace from Gerald.

*

Next day, under a little jerry-rigged white flag on a Tinkertoy stick, three boys and two collegiate neighbors convened on the duplex’s grass. The somewhat-chastened Oscar spoke - a politician in the making.

“I know we went too far by kidnapping you, Gerald. But you know why. We were desperate.”

He glanced at his cue-card, prepared under supervision from Alice. “We needed what we needed and we couldn’t get it from…” – he pointed dramatically, accusingly – ‘…him across the street, you know, over there. Him, I needed most because of my singing, and I still do, everybody agrees.”

Oscar cleared the throat which had not recovered fully from its screech when pinioned and plowed devilishly by an infuriated Gerald. He continued with full attention from Charley and Clyde, “We know you have ‘your thing’ for Jory-Beau, and I know you can’t do anything for my voice except to wreck it. So-o-o, here’s what our street needs and my plan – really our plan – for it. He…” – again he pointed to the closed-up house across the street, this time with a cherubic smile – “…he can reserve himself for me. I know he loves it, I love it, and I sing my best, everybody agrees, when he tends to me. I have auditions coming up, everybody knows. I pray in church he gets back soon.”

Gerald relaxed barely as he narrow-eyed Jory-Beau and Charley and Clyde and spotted Alice in the distance keeping watch over the proceedings.

What?

“Jory-Beau handled my friends here so well, and seemed to enjoy himself, that they want him to keep on doing them.” As seriously as an adult, Oscar faced Jory-Beau, “That will be new but good for you, Jory-Beau, because it won’t interfere between you and what you need – and Gerald loves to give you – in your private time. I mean, you live together. So boom-boom all you want. Charley and Clyde will only visit for their treatments, or up-dates, or whatever, you know, to their butts.” He snickered, “You see, this way, we all stay happy.”

“Yay,” two young throats called out to patterings of their palms coming together. Jory-Beau beamed and clapped as well.

He likes the idea – little daredevil! Gerald’s mouth was agape.

*

It was in all the area newspapers, on radio and newscasts that Oscar Luis Menendez-Finkelstein had won the role of The Queen of the Night for the coming season of the Ellis Island Opera Company’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Heinholtz Höllreiser, the company’s notorious director, was widely quoted about the young treble’s audition, but at greatest length by CCTV (Capitol City Television): “Oscar’s first aria may not have been fully settled at the time of his audition, but he was an absolute menace in Der Hölle Rache. Every note had been drilled into him by his amazing vocal coach, a man reticent even to supply his name. In a display worthy of any diva deserving bouquets (or should I say divo?), Oscar shunted aside his competitors who mistakenly thought they might benefit from similar coaching. Actually, he threw a tantrum worthy of the Met or La Scala, growling, ‘He’s mine and mine alone. Get away, bitches.’ That’s when we knew he was right for the role. We predict a great success.”

CCCC (Capitol City Community College) announced that one of its art students, a title-holding body builder known simply as Jory-Beau, placed first in the design category of its annual graphics competition with a 3’x3’ square symmetrical abstract in acrylics of two relatively small semi-circles in “neon orange” to either side of a “bruise-red vertical rod” terminating at the bottom in large, overlapped “rouge-pink hemispheres” the juncture of which was surrounded by a “pearly-white halo” of what appeared to be “droplets with tiny wriggling tails.” At the awards ceremony, newly-appointed Arts Department Chairman Edwin Owen declared, “From a rising new talent of great promise comes this seminal work.”

Another announcement, this from CCCC’s Sociology Department, cited as its top-prize-winning essay, a long one by Gerald B., Jr. of Alexia. Acting Chairperson, Dr. Dalton Brawne (ret.), praised the student’s “statistically rigorous vigor and stylistically sober prosaicism in handling so daunting a project of original research as Circumstances of Residential Interactions on a Single Block of a Capitol City Suburb during a Most Singular Period of Time.” Sensitive material was said to merit that “further details remain undisclosed at this time,” said Dr. Brawne, who vowed to take “personal interest in the study’s follow-up.” He added, “There are solid reasons for potential collaboration between the Sociology and Art Departments during the period of follow-up.”

CCMS (Capitol City Middle School) officials, with approval from the Board of Education, included, in its term-end Open Letter to Parents, noted “marked improvement in attitude and achievement by three formerly-troubled male pupils who accepted special tutoring services provided through the cooperation of a newly-founded Suburban Neighborhood Watch-Out Committee of Single Moms.”  Under-aged, none of the achievers’ names was made public.

The Committee to Re-Elect Our Governor sent Certificates of Commendation to the Community College, the Middle School, and the Suburban Neighborhood Watch-Out Committee of Single Moms along with Campaign Pledge Cards. The candidate’s platform slogan, “We promise good government starting with hard-driving statewide advocacy of effective means to combat juvenile delinquency in potentially wayward youth,” proved highly suggestive. Attractive to voters was the repeated chant, “Lead the nation. Lead the nation.” Although no shoe-in when his campaign began, the Governor won by a landslide. 

Large numbers of men and boys rubbed their hands in anticipation.

*

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