Chapter 2

1999

Someone was feeling his/her age this morning. Helen had five customers at two tables, two tourists and three locals as their dole money went into their accounts the day before and debit cards were used to pay. The smells and the sounds of cappuccino being created by the young waitress/barista filled the air. He/she was drinking the Moroccan milk tea of which he/she had become accustomed to in exotic Punchbowl's, Little Turkey as a youth, which tasted like perfumed shit to Bob. Everyone in town had thought, actually some still think, that he/she had employed young Jocelyn Kershaw just to get into her panties. He/she knows that the moment fifteen year old Jocelyn sees Bob, that her almost non-existent, thong style panties, will hit the floor with a satisfying thump, already saturated.

She hasn't seen him, hasn't seen him, hasn't seen him; beneath the coffee machine Bob could see her legs and thonged feet and, ah ... now she saw him, the panties are resting on her feet; bright red, thong style matching the faded pink rubber thongs underneath them on her feet, so she kicked all three to the wall behind her. She is due her break in what, oh, five minutes, although she is rushing her last creation. Up this way lately, it was becoming local wisdom to not have your coffee just before Jocelyn's morning and afternoon breaks as the quality plummets dramatically if Bob's in town. Or not in town too, as she loses some momentum with not getting her rocks off on a twice daily basis.

Helen stuck his/her protruding pointer finger right hand up in the air, and Jocelyn brought Bob's pot of black, strong billy tea, and stood beside him in her usual bodily position and location for her rostered morning break. Meanwhile, with his left hand, Bob turned the delicate, plain white china teapot Helen keeps for Bob's exclusive use, three times to steep the tea, poured the tea into the delicate china cup through the strainer, then added four sugars and stirred. The amount of sugar Bob used made Helen shudder as usual, while with his right hand, Bob fondly masturbated Jocelyn beneath her fashionably pink, understated micro mini-skirt until her knees gave way and she sat beside him. Her head rested on Bob's right shoulder, her back against the cushion of the 1950's style milk bar lounge, trying to make lucid sense of the world. She gives him marvellous service when he comes in, so he thinks it's only fair to reciprocate with pleasure.

"Is she in school?" Helen really is Tilly's maternal role model, fuckin' ugly mother to Bob's mind, he/she couldn't bring him/herself to see the girl off, on her first day as a big girl.

"You should have come with us, as you missed a treat because she was exactly half way between laughing and crying. It was all I could do not to laugh."

"Did she wear the shoes?"

"No, of course not; I told you, the only way you're going to get shoes on her is by using a farrier and body restraints."

"Bring them over with you tomorrow and I'll try to get them on her. You're too soft."

"What do you mean too soft? I got panties on her, for Christ's sake! I thought I would have to tie her to the boat to keep them on her so she wouldn't throw 'em overboard." Jocelyn is pulling Bob's hand to draw him to the back of the café. He excused himself politely to Helen to follow at the girl's insistence. She actually had a masculine sexual problem, one that Bob is not inflicted with, for a fact. Jocelyn prematurely ejaculates.

Honestly, she pulls his erection into the open air out in the back storage room (part of Rachael's bedroom) and she comes instantly at the sight of his erection; no, really, it bloody annoys him.

She doesn't have the problem with her boyfriend who himself comes as he pulls on the condom, she says sometimes he comes onto the outside of the condom, at just the sight of it or at maybe just the thought, who knows; she should talk, so then he has to open a new one. With Bob, she sees him in the open, so to speak, and her knees give way and he has to almost blindfold her so he can get inside her. He just kept fucking away until she started to have pains in her ovarian region from coming too often, then they'd stop. He hasn't quite yet got to the experience of ejaculating inside her. She will be so disappointed if that happens, as he had a vasectomy ten years ago and he thinks she is under the misapprehension that he's going to get her pregnant and take her away from the poverty of her father's exotic fruit farm, forty-five klicks west of town.

Inside again, Bob, as Polly, put the kettle on to make another pot of tea, and Jocelyn wobbles in on shaky knees behind him to warm the pot and teaspoon the tealeaves into it, "Any joy this time?" Helen was in perpetual amusement at the man, old enough to be the girl's grandfather, being able to out screw the child.

Then again, after those Japanese tourists...

"Nah! This charity work of donating my labour for the disabled should get me a tax deduction. She gets so worked up she can't help herself," Helen is perpetually astonished how the other half live! Well, really the other 99.99% of the world's human population, in that he is not only hung like a Shetland pony and she has the prettiest looking virginal pussy, but he/she does not contain the gizmos, the gonads, of either sex, which makes a man or a woman desire to have sex.

He/she sees others making fools of themselves, changing complete personalities when someone we feel is attractive, comes near to us, and just shakes his/her head, at the folly of it all. He/she has the gender of both but is sexually neutral. He/she actually had a sex test done and it came back undetermined with the chromosomal makeup of three X and one Y.

Bob drank his next cuppa and left for the island. The bay was like a millpond until out of the shelter of the local reef's protection and even then it was a long gentle roll without white water. At home, things felt odd.

No Angel running around looking for a snack, dragging some driftwood into the 'house' because it looks like a mutated bird, not even the sudden appearance of seagull's eggs which weren't there two minutes before on the sink, or the last time Bob looked anyhow.

Bob threw his dress-up town clothes of a pair of ragged ex-army khaki shorts, circa 1971, onto his bed and Helen's voice came over the radio, a bit crackly so we might be in for a storm. " ... come in Fischer..." he grabbed the microphone on the way past.

"Fischer here Harrison, what can I do you for? Over."

"A certain vicious monster is in my tender loving care because she did a mischief on a sixth class kid who is said to have laughed at her because she had lost her undies. By all accounts, and seeing as I taped him up myself it is official, she broke his nose and possibly his rib. Who taught her that one? Weren't me, over."

"Her lovable old grandad Bob will own up to that one. Tilly, I said only if he was going to use a weapon on you, didn't I? Over."

"But Unca Bob, he's a huge big kid so he is a weapon, over."

"Tilly, wherever you hid the undies, put them back on and go back to class. Say sorry to Ms Hartley and don't hurt the kid's parents when they go crook at you. I'll pick you up this 'arvo, no undies, no dinner, over."

"You're mean, Unca Bob, find undies, put them on, don't hurt naughty kid's parent. If he laughs at me again, can I hurt the big kid again? Over."

"If he hasn't learned from his first time, yeah, but don't break anything and I'll see him myself then. Did he hear that? Over."

"Yeah, Unca Bob, everything is loud and clear here, over."

"Piss off, Harrison." Childish giggles could be heard in the background, "Lots of static in the air so we may be coming up to a storm, the timing is right. My guess is two to three days with rising seas starting tomorrow, over."

"Roger, that one my brother. I'll check the forecast on the WWW and come back to you, over and out."

Bob's preparations for a storm were simplified a long time ago when Arnu and himself were making the island their fortress. It's not a big island, only the top last remaining bit of a well weathered shrunken volcano, with the old original bottomless crater full of fresh water, where a filtered pump was all that was needed to make it useful.