Little Lovers

Little Lovers

       by Douglas Bucklejohn

                        "Whisper to me sweetly," said the gopher to the mole.

                        "Give me all your money," shyly spoke the mousy foal.

                        "Only if you marry me," the furry rodent cried.

                        "Then off with you, you little turd," the paramour replied.

"If I could have anything I wanted," the jailbird pondered, I would have . . ." and here he thought for a minute. Nothing came to him. (You might think, gentle reader, that someone languishing in prison would be able to imagine a need, unless he was an imbecile, and had his head knocked against things stone with too great regularity.) He considered the question at length and then decided.

       "I would have a little lover," he determined within himself, for none there should hear. Prisoners regard loving, and speaking openly about loving something diminuitive, criminal. A man, for instance, who has been convicted in the courts of performing intercourse with a fourteen year old or younger, with or without her consent, with or without protection, and incarcerated, stands a grave likelihood of coming there to harm. Neither should he love at lower rate, you might add, having read this unwanted meditation. Big John knew his consumers. They had, before him and God, killed Henry Hubbard the child molester, by first mutilating his you-know-whats, then slicing open his thingamajig, next perforating his anus with sharp objects to hand, and finally performing certain ritual cleansing acts known only to inmates (a trade secret, one with which you do not wish, gentle reader, to acquaint yourselves, in any case).

       By "little lover" Big John meant a petite woman, not a child. He wished for someone to replace his daughter in his arms. He longed for that feeling of smallness and timidity and newness that a little person causes in the affections of the oversized. He would have been content with Liza Manelli (a now old woman, small for her age, fragile in appearance, and quaintly delicate in her motions) had she approached and said, "The Lord sent me to fulfill your wish for a little lover." Someone such as Ally McBeal would have certainly contented him, with her slightness of form and her luminescent skin and protuberances. Neither would he have balked at a little boy-like man in his arms. He did not really care what gender since his need really arose from, though he understood this not and need not understand it, a desire not for carnalis satium but one of sexualitu's kin and partners, human touch of a gentle sort.

       An angel heard Big John's cry and sent him what he wished for. Nightly, in his dreams at first, and then in his waking night-hours, a slim form crept up to the bars of his window (he had earned a window apartment on the outside prison wall since he showed no signs of wishing to escape, ever) and clicked her rings against the steel. For many a fortnight Big John thought he dreamt. Then waking finally to his fear and his aching arms, a state brought on by the scent of perfume and some other smellable presence, he finally climbed up on his bunk and looked out. There stood as beautiful a form as he had ever hoped to see near him again. She looked at him, smiled, and put her hand to her breast to indicate that she was shy and wished to be let in.

       "Who are you?" Big John said, quite loudly considering the wakefulness of the guards. They seemed not to notice anything since they kept walking around on the parapet without glancing his way. The fascinating woman said not a word but once again held her hand towards him as if to say, "Please, let me in."

       "Are you cold?" Big John asked and then when she shook her head he thought he'd been foolish. He grasped the metal bars and shook his head at her.

       "I don't think these will move," he said. "I have tried before to bend them but they are sturdy and well-set in stone. The figure smiled at him as if she enjoyed simply hearing him speak. Big John knew the implication, the love in her smile, and blushed. He felt such odd self-consciousness that he turned away for a moment, but then quickly looked back, fearing that she might be gone.

       "I will try," he said. "For you I will try again." He applied himself to the bars and they, oh wonders, began to bend. She nodded and smiled and mouthed to him to keep at it. If his love were great they would yield. He strained and rent apart until the muscles along his arm rampangled in great welts and salt ran in watery streams from his forehead. They bent, they bent! "They bend," she whispered, exultantly.

       Then she stood inside, and soon enough in his arms. "Oh, little one," was all Big John could manage at first. "Oh, my little sweet one," he said again and again, as he rocked her with great care in his great arms. She sat on his lap and laid her long tresses against his chest with such simple giving that Big John began to cry. He did not cry long, though, since he felt it a shame to let tears fall when the desire of his heart sat in his embrace. John traced the lines of her tender cheeks with a great, heavy finger, fearful of hurting her, worried about disturbing her. She seemed a little frightened at his size, at his hands' huge proportions, but something in her eyes, too, told of pleasure. She so small, he so large, they sat there many hours while he touched whatever of herself she gave up to him to touch. They spoke hardly a word but learned to understand each other well indeed.

       When day broke, Big John said with sudden worry, "You had better go home, my little lover. The light from yonder window breaks. Your parents will wonder where you are!" She smiled and looked on him with pity.

       "Dear, big John," she said. "This is now my home. I'll not leave your side. I am yours forever." With that she clutched him and held him and they both knew that death would have to part them. No guard would be able to separate what God had brought together.