A DIALOG & WRITING LESSON

[mgr]

=================================================================
The author permits any kind of archiving, posting, reposting,
and reproduction in fixed form or otherwise, free or for profit,
of this story. Copyright (C) 2000 by Felix Lance Falkon,
[email protected]. This work is unsuitable for minors. Standard
warnings: slippery when wet, this end up, for external use only.
Comments invited. You may rewrite this, but if you do, please
replace my name with yours and send me a copy of your version.

A DIALOG & WRITING LESSON Part 1/2
(revised & expanded version of 2000 Jan 30)

by Felix Lance Falkon

Morganstern, now on his back, looked up at Jon, the lithe
young stud who was just starting his first impaling thrust. But
with no more than an inch of himself inside Morganstern, who was
the bigger, more muscular of the two naked young writers, Jon
stopped and held himself perfectly still. Morganstern asked,
"What's the matter?" "Short fuze, real short." "You afraid
you'll go off too soon?" "Sure am," said Jon.

"May I make a few suggestions?" asked Morganstern as he felt
Jon cautiously ease himself deeper.

"Go ahead," said Jon with a jerk of his head that swung his
blond hair clear of his eyes. "Suggest away."

"Don't put your reply in the same paragraph as my
question, the way you did in the first paragraph of this story.
Instead, start a new paragraph with every change in who's
talking, as I'm doing now."

"Uh – why?"

Morganstern felt his abdominal muscles contract into a taut,
concave ripple as he curled his hips up to meet the next impaling
thrust. He took a deep breath, tightened the layer of muscle that
swept across his broad chest, then said, "It makes it lots
easier for the reader to tell who's saying what. It's like . . .
like in that first paragraph, the reader's not quite sure who
said, Afraid I'll shoot too soon.' Also, you'll have shorter paragraphs, which are easier to read than screens or pages full of uninterrupted columns of type. Newspapermen call writing such long paragraphs tombstoning,' because the results look like grey
tombstones: boring and uninviting.

"Indenting every paragraph makes a story much easier to
read. And since that's the way almost all printed fiction is
done, it's what the reader expects. Don't distract the reader
from what you and I are doing and saying Right Now.

"And if you're preparing a story you're going to post on a
newsgroup or transmit by e-mail, put a blank line after each
paragraph, limit line length to about 65 or 70 characters and
spaces, and indent each paragraph five spaces instead of using
the tab' key. Do _not_ make the right margin straight – that is, do not right justify' a text file; leave the right margin
ragged the way I'm doing here." Morganstern felt Jon thrust
himself in another inch, and met that thrust with another wiggle
and squirm as he felt Jon push even harder in response.

"Okay; what else?" asked Jon.

"When you ask a question in dialog, put the question mark or
exclamation point at the end, inside the quote marks, without
putting a comma there too."

"Oh." Jon took a deep breath, went in deeper. "And – did
you say you had more suggestions?" he asked.

"Yup. When you have a bit of dialog that doesn't end with
a question mark or exclamation point, and is followed by he said' – or he asked' or he replied' or a phrase like that -- then use a comma -- _inside_ the quotation marks – like this," said Morganstern. "Use a period just before the closing quote marks when you don't have a he said' -- or asked' or the like following the quote marks -- like this." Morganstern squirmed again. "If you begin a sentence with he said' or a similar word,
put a comma right after the last word before the quote marks, and
then capitalize the first word after the quote marks."

Jon began a more vigorous thrust. "I think I understand."

"Three more things: Don't feel that you have to reach for
substitutes for said' in speech tags. Using observed' or
expounded' or intoned' is far more distracting than the simple
he said,' which is almost invisible to the reader. Those fancy substitutes distract the reader from what's being said inside the quotation marks. Of course, the verb in a speech tag has to be one that makes sense: you can't squirm' a sentence; you can't
hiss, `Take that!'

"With questions, use he asked.' Use whispered' or
`growled' or verbs like those very sparingly. Use them only
when you're giving the reader additional information that the
context doesn't already make clear.

"An example: "Good morning," snarled Kurt.' In this case, the _way_ Kurt spoke doesn't match the words Kurt used. Here, you have to usesnarled' to make the reader aware of that
mismatch.

"And the other two things?" asked Jon. He was breathing
harder now, and pulling back between strokes.

"One way to break up the monotony of he said' he said' he said' is to leave off the speech tag entirely – but only when it's perfectly obvious who's speaking. With just the two of us, and you asking questions and me answering them, we can leave out Jon said' and Morganstern said' and go for several paragraphs without confusing the reader. With ordinary conversation and only two speakers, you should identify who's talking about every third paragraph. And always make it clear which he' you mean,
especially if you have three male speakers going at it.

"Then, if one of us talks for more than one paragraph at a
time – as I'm doing right now -- leave off the end-of-paragraph
quote marks until the last paragraph of that multi-paragraph
speech," Morganstern said as he tightened his arms around Jon's
chest, locking their naked bodies together. "But you still need
opening quotes at the start of every paragraph of that speech,
like this.

"Another way to break up the monotony of he said' is what I'm doing right here." Morganstern felt Jon's muscles tighten, felt him drive in hard. "In the same paragraph with a within- quotes speech, end the quoted part with a period – or a full stop if you are a Briton -- and then put in something like my feeling you tighten up as you sink yourself hilt-deep into me. This can advance the plot at the same time that the writer establishes who is saying the words inside the quote marks. But again: readers just don't notice the he said' as long as what
he's saying is interesting."

"Yeah? Lemme get this straight. When you interrupt the
quoted part, and you want to use a verb that is not a synonym
or substitute for said,' you end what's inside the quotes with a period, and start what follows the quote with a capital letter." Jon stopped his next stroke in mid-thrust. "And with questions and question marks, do them like this?" He grinned down at Morganstern. "But if you _are_ using he said' or he asked' right after some stuff in quotes, then you _don't_ to put a capital letter on the he' – right?" he asked.

"Exactly." Now Morganstern felt Jon thrust even harder with
his next stroke, felt a bit of rotary motion as well. "And just
like this," he said as he grinned back up at Jon.

"And I even noticed how you're using single quotes inside
the double-quote marks without your telling me."

"Actually, I'd rather use `` and '' for opening and closing
quotes, but I haven't found anyone else who likes them, even
though they are standard keyboard characters doubled. Using
anything not on a standard keyboard in e-mailed or news-group
stories – like using `smart quotes' or any of the typesetting
double-quote codes – is a real pain for readers whose equipment
doesn't fit yours just right."

"Well," said Jon, "I still say this a really weird time t'
make with a grammar lesson -- but yeah, my equipment fits into
yours real nice and tight."

Morganstern felt a grin spread across his own face. "Well,
the grammar lesson's keeping you cooled down, isn't it? A lusty
young colt like you will usually go off too soon when he climbs
onto a big, hunky muscle-stud like me; and you've been riding me
for -- Hey! Slow down! You're getting there too soon!"

"Yeah – I -- noticed. Talk -- t' me -- about -- something
-- else -- quick," Jon panted as he slowed almost to a stop.

"Lemme see -- you got me going too – there's, yeah,
emphasis: since plain-text e-mail doesn't have underlining or
italics, I use to begin emphasized words and to end that
emphasis. I do the same for a character's unspoken thoughts."

Morganstern silently told himself, Now we're both cooling
down. Aloud, he said, "The reader can convert those asterisks to
his own word-processor's codes for underlining or italics, or
just leave them in the file that way.

"There are other ways to emphasize in text. One is simply
to capitalize the Initial Letters of the words you want to
emphasize. For even greater emphasis, since ordinary e-mail
doesn't support bold-face or bold-face-italic type, capitalize
the WHOLE word. Beyond that, you can (on very special
occasions) do THIS. Although some people like to emphasize
with a single underline before and after an emphasized word, I
think the and work better, especially if you use lots of
dashes for punctuation. Watch out for the difference between the
dash – which pushes phrases apart -- and the well-placed
hyphen, which pulls words together into compounds like
plain-text' and e-mail' and even `well-placed.'

Jon asked, "What about those -- what do you call 'em --
three dots?"

"They're called an ellipsis. You can use one instead of a
dash. Most readers will see the dash as showing an abrupt change
in what you're saying, or -- at the end of a word -- that you've
suddenly stopped. The ellipsis . . ." His voice trailed off, then
re-started. "The ellipsis originally meant there was something
missing, and still does in scholarly writing. Now, in fiction, it
also implies that you gradually stopped, either in the middle
of a sentence . . . or at the end of a complete one. . . ."
Morganstern wet his lips. "Note: complete sentences, period
plus three dots. Incomplete ones, just . . .

"All too many writers have the bad habit of reaching for
substitutes for words they've already used. A very perceptive
science-fiction writer once wrote, English has no synonyms; it has a great many words that mean _almost_ the same thing.' But Mark Twain wrote, The difference between the right word and the
almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the
lightning bug.' He also wrote, Use the _right_ word, not its second cousin.' Or to paraphrase Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Good
writing is the right words in the right order.' "

"Some writers – present company excepted, of course -- will
invent several different ways to identify someone in a story, and
then -- for no other reason than avoid using the same words
for the same thing – such a writer might call you Jon,' and in your next appearance, the lithe-bodied youth,' then the lusty writer.' Next, he might use your last name alone, then the
naked young man mounted on Morganstern's magnificently muscled
physique,' and then the blond studling,' and finally back to Jon,' leaving the reader unsure if the writer has one character
on stage, or six."

Jon snickered, then said, " `Magnificently muscled' indeed!"

"Well, I am. I worked hard to get these muscles, and I'm
not letting the reader forget them."

"I know, I know. And since muscle-hunks like you happen t'
turn me on –"

"I noticed that already."

"– but conceited ones don't, and --"

"You wouldn't want me to lie about my magnificent
musculature, would you?"

"– and I can't tell if you're kidding when you say things
like that; and that makes it even funnier, even if you are being
serious; but if we start laughing while we're doing this –"
Jon thrust hard, squirmed, eased back, slowed almost to a stop.
"-- it'll be over much too soon. So -- let's get back t' the
writing lesson, before I -- you know."

"Just as bad as reaching too often for substitute words is
to begin a story with tiresomely detailed physical descriptions,
measurements, and past histories of all the principal characters
-- which is precisely what we did not do here. Instead, we
followed the ancient advice: start in media res, which is
Latin for in the middle of things.' Homer did, some three _thousand_ years ago, beginning the _Iliad_ with: Sing,
Goddess, of the anger of Achilles, . . .' right smack in the
middle of the Trojan War. His words sing to us yet.

"Thus, we started this story, quite literally, during
your first thrust. Blocks of explanation, like these paragraphs,
are useful to cool someone down. But fiction works better if the
writer slips in background details and descriptions of the
principal characters a few words at a time, early in the action,
like the time you tossed your head to get your blond hair out
of your eyes. Break up lectures, if any, with action and dialog.
Here and there, the point-of-view character may be reminded of
something in his past by what's happening in the main plot."

"Like – like maybe your very first -- you know . . ."

"Right." Morganstern took a deep breath, feeling his broad
chest expand, remembering, for a few seconds, the smell of the
gym down by the beach. He remembered the ache in his muscles
after a hard workout, remembered the first time he'd stayed
behind after the other bodybuilders left for the evening. He and
the gym's night manager had stripped down all the way, stiffened
themselves up, and then, on a bench in front of the biggest
mirror in the gym, . . .

Morganstern shook the memory away. "Yes, because a first
_any_thing is something that people, real and imaginary, do
remember. Even more so, the very first time you go all the
way, whether with a well-buffed hunk or a twenty-buck hustler,
leaves you changed, deeply changed. What's happened, what's
made you change is important to you – which makes what
happened in that story important and interesting to the reader
as well.

"Now, this deep into a story really isn't the time to
stop for a static description of my electric-blue eyes; my curly
brown hair; even my winsome, snub-nosed face. The reader might
have decided, pages and pages ago, that I have aquiline features
and dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair, because I didn't
show the reader otherwise in the first few paragraphs, either
by having me remember how I look or by letting the reader
see those details through my eyes. And since you didn't have a
convenient mirror mounted on the ceiling for me – and the
reader -- to look up at my reflection while you were busily . . .

"But you're right, of course: mentioning my `magnificently
muscled physique' was overdoing it, especially this far into
the story, and even more so if I hadn't already established in
the first few paragraphs that we're a couple of well-built studs.
After that, it can help the reader to be the point of view
character, to be in the middle of the erotically exciting
events –"

" `Erotically exciting'? Now I know you're kidding." Jon
carefully pulled back, slid in hilt-deep again.

"-- if I slip in an occasional reminder of our hunkiness. I
can mention the pressure of your warm, wide chest against
against my powerful thighs, because that's what's happening to
me right now, and –"

"Now you've done it!" Jon thrust faster, harder, faster
still.

"Can't -- you -- slow -- down?"

"Not now. Too hot. Real hot."

"I – noticed," panted Morganstern, trying to meet every
impaling thrust.

Jon suddenly gasped aloud, rammed himself all the way in,
went rigid, and then slowly, slowly relaxed and started breathing
again. "I was going along okay, stretching it out just like you
told me to, until you reminded me just what we're doing, and what
your thighs feel like against my chest -- and then how deep I was
going, and -- and all of a sudden, I couldn't stop." He panted
for a moment, then said, "I bet you can't keep on with this
lesson if you get on top."

"I can so! Where's my shirt? I always carry a few extra in
my pocket. I'll put one on before we . . ."

"Don't worry – I got a supply in my bureau. Let me see."
Jon straightened his arms, looked down between their still-linked
bodies, and said, "Yeah -- as long and thick as yours is, an
`extra large' oughta fit just right."

"That was deftly done," said Morganstern, as they uncoupled.

Jon rolled off and -- a moment later -- sat up. "Huh?"

"Without stopping to explain or to cite measurements, you
established that we're using protection and that I'm well-
equipped for our next round. You're letting the reader decide
just how long and thick and wide my `extra large' might be."

Continued in next part

[mgr]

A DIALOG & WRITING LESSON part 2/2
(revised & expanded version of 2000 Jan 30)

by Felix Lance Falkon

"Yeah?" Jon, now on his feet, pulled open the bureau's top
drawer and passed a foil-wrapped packet to Morganstern, who stood
up, stretched, then opened the packet. "I s'pose we could start
measuring each other – chest, arms, waist -- then drop t' the
calves, work on up t' our thighs and -- you know. That could --
that would be more interesting than just saying how tall you
are and how big around the chest and, as you put it, how long and
how thick where it -- it counts." Jon grabbed a towel, peeled off
his protection, and wiped himself dry. "Like -- Hey! Like the
beginning of this story, where you established -- without ever
stopping what was going on, that you're bigger than me -- and a
real muscle-hunk at that -- but that I've got an okay body too."

"Another problem." Morganstern finished putting on the
extra large' contents of the packet, then applied a dab of the lubricant that Jon dug out of the drawer. "If you write that a story-stud of yours has -- say -- ten-inches, some readers will think this is exciting, but others will think your character is laughably over-equipped. What is all right for B, will quite
scandalize C, for C is so very particular.' "

"Again -- huh?"

"A Gilbert & Sullivan quote. From The Yeomen of the
Guard, I think." Morganstern gestured at the bed with a sweep of
his right hand. Jon stretched out on his back, tucked a pillow
behind his head, and spread his legs. Morganstern knelt between
Jon's thighs, leaned forward, found his target, thrust, and then
stopped an inch or so inside. "One writer likes his characters
to be kind of chubby and well-furred; another likes studs in
their twenties, with taut, sharply etched muscles they get from
working out at the gym." He eased an inch deeper, felt Jon
respond with a squirm and a squeeze.

"Got any Rules for which kind of characters t' use?"

"Nope. I really don't have any Rules for the writing game –
just lots of suggestions. You can write a story that's all
dialog, with no speech tags at all; you just have to realize that
when you do, that format will take some of the reader's attention
away from what's going on in the story.

"It helps to have the characters sound a bit different from
each other as they speak: I use long sentences with long words;
you speak more informally, with more slang, more elisions."

"Elisions?" asked Jon.

Morganstern wiggled his hips from side to side, then eased
deeper still. "Leaving out a part of a word, like s'pose for
suppose, or t' for to.

"Yeah? I notice that you stress a lot of words as you talk,
sorta like this. Makes you sound – you know -- funny."

"It beats talking corn-pone hill-billy talk to show what I
mean. Somebody with a good ear can spot the difference between a
Kentucky accent and a Mississippi one, or even between Brooklyn
and Queens, but I'm not that good.

"Then there's what a story's about. Some readers want you
to get on with the Main Event, with just enough plot to get all
the characters into the same bed at the same time. Other readers
want more plot and dialog, less details and description. Still
others get excited by stories of bondage and humiliation, of
whipping and torture; a few even like stories of being eaten
alive – or worse -- on stage." Morganstern slid a deeper into
Jon, pulled back, thrust again. Morganstern watched Jon grit his
teeth, felt Jon clamp down hard, felt and saw him relax with a
long sigh. Jon's eyes focused on Morganstern's, and the two men
grinned at each other.

Morganstern realized he was tensing up inside. He slowed
his stroke. "Some get turned on by characters who use all the
standard four-letter words, along with a few well-chosen five-
and six-letter ones. Others --"

"-- manage without any dirty words at all, like -- like
we've been doing --"

"-- which works as a demonstration, but does call attention
to how the story's told, instead of what it's about. And
while some people are really into incest or under-age characters;
others want to stay away from those areas which are, as the old
cliche has it, illegal, immoral, or fattening."

"More suggestions?" asked Jon.

"An important one: although Kipling wrote: `There are nine
and sixty ways, of constructing tribal lays, And every single
one of them is right,' I think that a very effective way to
construct a story is to pick the right point of view from
which you can best tell that story, and then put your reader
firmly into that point-of-view character – seeing what that
character sees, feeling what the character feels, and thinking
and remembering and deciding as the character does those things.
In short, let the reader be that chosen character from one
end of that story to the other.

"The reader," said Morganstern, "will experience being
in the story if you – the author -- avoid interrupting
the action to address the reader directly, if you avoid making
the reader jump into another character's head, and if you avoid
making him look down on the scene from a set of disembodied eyes
hovering over the action. Also, do not start the story with a
lecture, or biographies of the characters, or a descriptive
passage told from any point of view other than that of your
chosen character; don't delay getting the reader into the
story's point-of-view character and into the story itself."

"Hey," Jon said, "I thought you said that if a quoted
paragraph doesn't end with a close-quote mark, then the following
paragraph is automatically being said by the speaker of the
preceding one. So – why did you identify yourself as the speaker
again?"

"It's more important not to confuse the reader than it is to
depend on the reader noticing that missing close-quote mark. Now
-- where was I?"

"About four inches deep and counting." Jon squirmed up
against Jon's next impaling thrust. "A bit deeper, now."

"That too. Point of view -- a long story may be told better
as a series of shifts from one character to another -- but only
if there is a clear break -- always marked with extra blank
lines in manuscript, on screen, or printed on paper. Some
writers put a few asterisks across that space. The first
sentence following the break must put the reader firmly into
the next point-of-view character's head. I saw one story recently
in which the point of view shifted from one of the story's two
characters to the other with every paragraph. That's hard to
do well, but it's a very interesting way to tell a story: the
reader is alternating between those two characters as they
interact, physically and in the dialog. However, I still think
the most effective way to tell almost all stories is to tell
them from just one point of view, so the reader can really get
into that character's memory, and eyes, and ears –"

"-- and other appendages." Jon grabbed Morganstern's hips,
pulled in another half inch. "Then if I wanted the reader t'
watch us from above, t' watch your back muscles working, t' watch
your butt pumping, pulling back, thrusting again, then --"

"Well, you really can't do that and still hold this story
together. You could go back and rewrite the beginning so that
I look up at a mirror on the ceiling over the bed and watch you
humping away on top of my muscular self, but that's about it.
Having me remember now what I saw then doesn't work at all
– you didn't have a mirror on the ceiling, because if you
had, I would have noticed it then – and so would the
reader, who was being me at the time.

"A minor suggestion is to avoid having characters with
names that sound or look too much alike: Joe' and Moe,' for
example, or even Danny' and Dennis,' unless they happen to be
interchangeable twins and you want to emphasize how much alike
they are. With our names – Morganstern' has three syllables, while Jon' has one. Our names don't start with the same letter.
They don't even rhyme. So, there's less chance to confuse the
reader." Morganstern eased himself deeper. "There -- all the way
in. Are you still --"

"Billy!" yelped Jon.

" `Billy'? That would work -- two syllables, doesn't rhyme
with either --"

"I don't mean Billy, a two-syllable name that doesn't rhyme
with your name or mine; I mean Billy, my kid brother, who just
came in through the hall door I forgot t' lock."

Morganstern jerked his head around, looked back over his
shoulder, saw a sturdy young blond stride towards the bureau,
shedding clothes along the way. "Don't worry, dude," Billy said
as he finished stripping and reached into the bureau. "I'm at
that in-between age: old enough to vote, too young to buy beer,
so even though I look like a kid, I'm not jail-bait."

So that's why Jon has that size on hand, Morganstern told
himself as Billy stiffened up, rolled on an `extra large,' and
climbed onto the bed.

Jon said, "Billy, this is Morganstern. Morganstern, Billy."

"And," Billy said as he knelt astride Morganstern's thighs
and found his target, "since I've got you 'tween me and Jon,
this doesn't count as incest either." He slid himself half-way
into Morganstern, paused for Morganstern to catch his breath,
then completed his impaling thrust.

Morganstern felt a beardless chin snuggle against his neck,
caught a whiff of something spicy. "Smells good; what is it?" he
asked.

"Stuff I put on my hair," Billy said, tightening his grip on
Morganstern's chest.

Morganstern, now spitted to the hilt and stretched tight,
rammed himself all the way into Jon.

Jon gasped, then said, "Billy?"

"Yeah?"

"He's an `extra large' too."

"He is?" Billy pulled back a couple of inches, carefully
slid in again.~

"Sure am," said Morganstern. "Jon's a nice fit; good and
tight, and the way he's squirming now . . ."

"You'd squirm too," panted Jon, "if you had this muscle-stud
plugged into you."

Morganstern felt Billy pull back and then ram himself in all
the way, heard Billy eagerly say, "Hey dude, that sounds great!
After we finish this round, let's swap around; me on the bottom;
Jon, you on top; Morganstern, you in the middle again. I gotta
find out how this big muscle-dude'll feel inside me."

"Before we do that," said Jon, breathing hard, "there's a
mirror I bought yesterday. Now that's there's three of us here,
we got enough guys to mount it on the ceiling, right over the
bed. Morganstern, if it'll keep you from going off too soon, how
'bout explaining t' Billy why we can't just look down on the
scene from up there."

"You can tell a story that way," said Morganstern, now
comfortably sandwiched between the blond brothers' warm, naked
bodies. "It's just – usually -- more effective to pick one
point of view, and then let the reader be that character all
the way through a story to the end. And come on, why would
_any_body want to wiggle out from between you two hunky studs
and go flitting, like a bat, up amongst the cobwebs? Instead,
I've got Billy's chest against my back, and Jon squirming
underneath, and I'm feeling Billy inside me and feeling me
poking around inside Jon, and all three of us – oops!"

Morganstern heard Jon ask, "You getting turned on?"

"Yeah." Morganstern felt himself fast coming to a boil as he
thrust harder, faster, harder still.

As Billy speeded his own stroke, he said into Morganstern's
ear, "I'll try and catch up."

Seconds later, Morganstern felt his muscles tighten. Another
stroke, and he went rigid. Billy thrust a few times more, then
went rigid too while he and Morganstern pumped themselves dry.

Still later: long, delicious minutes later, Morganstern
slowly relaxed, still catching his breath. "Convinced?"

"Convinced," said Jon, from under Morganstern.

"Beats cobwebs any day," said Billy, his sweat-damp body
relaxing on Morganstern's back. "You did seem to be laying it on
a bit thick -- Morganstern heard this,' . . . Morganstern felt
that,' . . . you know."

" `Merely corroborative detail, . . .' " said Morganstern.

Billy's voice joined Morganstern's. Together, they recited,
" `. . . intended to give artistic verisimilitude . . .' "

And Billy, alone, finished the quote: " `. . . to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' Poo-Bah, The
Mikado, words by Sir William Schwenk Gilbert of Gilbert &
Sullivan."

"If I laid it on thick enough for you to notice, then I laid
it on thick enough to distract the reader," Morganstern said.

"Come on, dude; you had to lay it on to make your point."
Billy sat up. "Here's a Rule for you: if you don't have copies
of a digital file on three separate disks, you might as well not
have any. That's because hard drives eventually crash. They're
convenient, but not for storing important stuff."

"That's a good one," said Morganstern, rolling off Jon and
sitting up himself. "Did you –"

"-- lose stuff? No, but I once got a real scare. The class
nerd saved my butt. Since then, he helps me with computer stuff,
and I coach him at the gym." Billy slid off the bed, stood up.
"I'll get the ladder; you two bring up the mirror. By the time
we get that thing up and mounted, we oughta be reloaded and
ready for another round. So: what tools do we need, Jon?"

=================================================================
The author permits any & all archiving, posting, reposting, and
reproduction in fixed form, free or for profit, of this story.
Copyright (C) 2000 by Felix Lance Falkon, [email protected]. This
work is not suitable for minors.

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