Message-ID: <25443asstr$964321809@assm.asstr-mirror.org> From: "seanfarragher" <seanfarragher@email.msn.com> X-Original-Message-ID: <NEBBKECCNOEJHMGPDAFHGELDCDAA.seanfarragher@email.msn.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Subject: {ASSM} From TxM6 Tyler Texas 1959 mfmf Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 23:10:09 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org> Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2000/25443> X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, apuleius From TxM6 Taxi Murders Sextet Hyperfiction Novel http://www.taximurders.com/enfer TxM6 is entirely a work of fiction for adults only. Copyright (c) 2000 Sean Farragher 0933xTexas02371959.htm JHW: Walkabouts "The Doctor's Daughters" Bucolic ain't just pastoral; Naturally Sex wins. Tyler, Texas: Wednesday, August 26, 1959 "Take off your bra," Debra said to her older sister Allison. "Show them your knobs." I won. You lost. Strip poker. At sixteen I played Innocent games. No reluctant Baptist girls obsessively thinking about boy's and things but pretending to not care. A by-product myself of a good fuck between a Jewish/Catholic Girl and a Congregational Minister's son, these Jewish girls were the real thing, I remember thinking. No Confession and dirty sins, no need to worry about being damned for touching a Christian girl, I fell in love with the older girl Allison who was fifteen. Her sister, Debra, twelve liked to tease, but seemed easier with it. Allison, more shy than Debra confessed she had a thing for a neighbor boy Johnny, 17, who had a "Papa cock," as the girls bragged. Curious phrase, "Papa cock" for a girl so young. Wonder what she had been doing with Papa. Years later, it seemed both girls had a healthy curiosity about sex. At the time, didn't even consider the words incest. I should have or child molestation. I had been molested myself, but children move on to be adults and find the old doors and usual explanations tiresome. Now, years later, wondering about those girls, and that boy, and I how I had gained by it all, I realized that there had been nothing perverted about any of it. Father and mother of these girls were probably perfect citizens, and if they weren't, they would have been part of at least forty percent of all adults who molest children either physically or sexually. Nothing has changed in forty years, except we now at least recognize that human kind is not always nice. We have learned to lie better. I am getting ahead of my story. That last scene happened at the end of my Tyler summer that "innocent", brash, and hot, and then wet and cool. It was a simpler green, and lazy fishing with gentle Uncle, Aunt, and passing children. I lived the white boy holiday in the daily thunder storm. All during day the heat grew; at night, then it seemed to cool, but with the constant humidity, the air was just catching its breath. On Sunday we went to Church. Sometimes revivals, but I was a Catholic American Jewish boy in a Protestant world and grandma told me not to be saved unless I really meant it and would be able to go to a "real church" when I got home. She said you come from a line of barn storming Iowa preachers. You're kin to Jefferson and Justice Marshall. You're a good boy and you don't lie about God, you hear. To prove my rank, she showed me the silver spoon that actually bore that famous family Marshall crest. After her death many years later, I received that spoon and it helped bring me closer to knowing myself. I wondered then as a boy, if famous men had big peckers as I heard an Uncle say once at a famous gathering of the clans in New Jersey. II. At 16 years sex was everywhere for me. I breathed it, but just barely could give it name. I was a virgin almost. Had a brief fling with a colored maid named Carla before I met Alison and Debra. I had had assorted girlfriends who let me feel them up, touch their thing or play with mine. On the other hand, from books, some pornographic, I knew everything. I was also more informed than most of the kids my age. I had read all the doctor books, and found pictures myself. They were not the usual pin up shots, but pictures of my mother and my father doing it with some neighbors. Other pictures of other folks showed men sucking pussy and girls sucking dicks. There were even some pictures of fucking. I was not the innocent child. I knew and read. Peyton Place comes to mind now, and when I was home, before Texas I used a vacuum cleaner hose on my cock making my body jump. I only did it once. Later, after this summer I did it many times more and searched out greater adventures. Now, it was more than simply praying, eating great food, thinking of tits, or swallowing butter cookies, where I melted at the club pool, telling "shit against the fan jokes" to the boy friends of my "young lady" teenage cousins. "I mortified them," they said, but little did they know the whole time at the pool I wandered near the ladders coming up from the pool to spy a tit or taste of butt. I spied on them with their boy friends when they kissed good night. I swear I saw one of them making out, being felt up as it was called then, but I might have been dreaming about the book I found that described the evils of sex so well, it made me want to do it. Above and beyond all of this, I didn't really know what it all meant. I did say the summer was innocent. Passing time, walking the colored neighborhood downtown, I watched everything grow and much of it seemed out of place, but I didn't care. I was on an adventured as I called it. At times Grandma thought I was not homesick, but I missed nothing in New Jersey except Paramus bathing beach. I felt as if the Texas heat had swallowed, and then coughed my heart back when l mowed the lawn and cut the electric cord the first time. I felt frizzed after that, my grandmother was angry, but then laughed when she saw I was not hurt. We always passed the time playing Canasta and farting. We had contests to see who can let the biggest one go. Life passed, the days narrowed, as they say, and how the details of the street were vague, except for those two silly girls, OK, not silly, really, I searched for them as they played tag, Allison shaking her shoulders, dancing off the porch of her house, into the breeze "and out the frog's mouth," she sang. I sneezed watching her dance on one foot her shorts caught in the cleft of her ass. Her "bubbies," as I called them, confined to a bra still shook like waves held in place. I wondered about the song she sang but watching her tits so hard, feeling her smile as I watched, not knowing she knew I was watching, I was embarrassed and never ask her what the frog's mouth meant although years later I speculated about it, and came up with quite a rare XXX rating movie that compared to "Deep Throat." The heat pressed harder, deeper than I had ever known. Oppressive humidity and daily thunder storms for relief. Now at the end of the summer, not really bored, I longed for playing football back in New Jersey, and I believed and I was right that was the best way to get really laid. I needed to get back home, and the last week of August dragged. I didn't want to miss those two a day practices that made you melt inside because you sucked stones instead of water. Except for the hint of new sex with Carla, I wanted the seasons to turn, but I knew there were new things here in Texas that I had longed to feel. Allison's tits did not compare to Carla's, that dear Negro maid of my fantasies, but Allison was there shifting back and forth on one foot wearing nothing underneath her tee shirt. She was young and easy and I could be with her and no one would think it strange. I knew if I just could reach long enough, I could seize her offering breasts and own her body like it were mine. A week after I cut the cord the first time, I sliced the mower cord again in two places. Grandma wasn't home. She had told me not to mow anymore. I did it because I wanted something to do, and to show her. I screamed when I cut the cord, "Fuck No," like I heard this old scoutmaster do when he almost chopped his foot off with an axe. I didn't know the neighbor girls, Debra, 12 and Allison almost 15 had watched my clumsy grass cutting antics from the porch of their house with an older neighborhood guy Johnny who at 17 seemed more a man than a boy. Debra laughed at my upset, and eagerly ran up to where I had been working to look at the shattered power cord. The other, Allison followed her sister. They mocked but then they called Johnny over and he helped me fix the cord. I didn't give a hoot for him until he had actually fixed it showing me how to do it if it happened again. He pushed it testing it, and I let him do half the yard before he quit. I had seen the guy around the neighborhood, always driving his car too fast around the corners or with a buddy in the front seat playing the fool. I have to admit I didn't take credit for fixing the cord, and I told grandma about what had happened and she said that Peters boy (Johnny) is good for you. You need an older brother to show you things. I sure wished you lived down here all the time, but you mother never let you and your dad is off chasing skirts and getting drunk like a teenager. I knew it was true so I didn't mind what she said. I was surprised she had said it about her own son. Nothing more happened that day and grandma wasn't mad, and Johnny who seemed to have taken an interest surprised me by asked me to come over and help him work on the '49 Chevy. After a few days of grime and grease, Johnny found out that I knew more than he did about girls and how their bodies worked. He taught me more about cars than I ever knew, and I worked hard with him. Later that next week, when it was too hot to work in the afternoon, Johnny confessed that he and Allison and Debra played naked games together and did it. He told more when we were playing what he had called "Texas pocket pool" which meant we looked at his daddies collection of studio cheesecake and jerked off in our pants. I told Johnny I had seen pictures of people fucking and I asked him if that is what he did. He told me he liked Debra more, because she was cuter and seemed fearless, but he needed another guy for Allison, and he asked if I would come with him next time. He told me that Allison thought I was cute, and if I would come over and play with her that would make it easier for him to go with the sister. He asked if I would help a buddy out treating me like I was almost a brother. Maybe grandma was right. I was sixteen and he was a much older seventeen. I suspect my hormones hadn't quite caught up. Come on, Sisters! I didn't believe him. "Stop the bullshit, Johnny." Their father's an eye Doctor, Johnny explained. "They're not Christians so they don't care about sex like the bullshit girls you meet at Sunday School. Trust me I did them." Next day, we knocked on the back door and the maid let us in. The girls were giggling, and the maid said, I don't know if I should do this, I have my afternoon off today, and I promised your mama. She gave in when Allison smiled. Inside, Johnny asked for a beer, and Allison snuck one in from the kitchen bring three others. We drank and Johnny smoked. The girls wore just a tee shirt and shorts. Debra got the cards out and said the game is strip poker. "Are you all in?" Debra was the first to lose. Quickly, just like that she pulled her pants down and up giggling. "What a fucken tease, Johnny said. The real game had started just like that. Debra then ran into the bathroom saying she had to pee. Allison told us she had no idea what her sister planned. When Debra came out she was wearing her mother's silk nightgown and fancy shoes. Johnny laughed and Allison told her to stop acting like a baby. Caught up in the craze, and feeling my second beer, trying to keep up with Johnny, I pulled my pants down and up just as fast as she did when I lost. "Another fucken tease," Johnny said. "When are we gonna stop the bullshit." "Why do you care if Henry's a tease Johnny," Debra mocked. Johnny pulled his pants down and kept them down. He stuck out, but I almost matched him. Debra made us stand next to each other so she could measure taking out a tape measure she ran to find in the maid's sewing box. She pushed our cocks together so they touched and measure them both at once. It looked like she was tying us with a ribbon. It felt strange when I got harder while she measured just like it had for Carla. Debra was not impressed with either of us. She looked at me close and laughed, compared me to Johnny who stuck out further, and said, smirking, "don't worry, it'll grow up," and she patted it watching it bounce. Her easy manner helped us relax and I took my shirt off and was completely naked. Johnny did the same and Allison pulled her shirt off but hesitated about her bra and panties. Looking at Allison the only one still half dressed I tried to imagine her completely naked. When Johnny, who was thinking the same think, asked her "to do it," she pulled back unsure almost shy. "Take off your bra," Debra told Allison. "Show them your knobs. Want me to help you." "Yes, turning her back, Debra unsnapped Allison while Johnny and I watched. I don't think I had seen anything so beautiful as those soft, round innocent breasts with slight nipples. "God, they are great," I said aloud and Allison and Debra heard me. "Not God, -- Allison," Debra said. She rubs them with cream every night and makes them tingle when she rubs her self off. Once she was so proud of them she walked outside in the back yard at 3 AM topless and ran up to Johnny's window in the garage where he slept. He wasn't there that night but she loved shaking them in the air, she told me, and I with just a thimble joined her. "You do too," angry, she glared at her sister. You rub them with daddy's soap and after shave. Yuck." Still, Allison refused to take her pants off pulling them up when Debra had gotten one side down but got away when Johnny played with his log and we watched him unroll it like a great water snake, as he called it. I couldn't help notice that his cock head was different than mine. I knew of men who were not circumcised, but I had never seen one. When I asked about it, Debra said "that's because he is not Jewish like you Henry. All Jewish boys get circumcised, dummy." "I am not Jewish. I am Catholic," I whispered. "I am glad, I don't like Jewish boys," Allison said. They are too serious all the time. I looked closely at Johnny's cock until he pulled away asking if I was queer. I said no, but that was not the first time I felt uncomfortable with that word around him. Allison noticing my distress kissed me, saying that she didn't like people who called people names. I have no idea why Allison picked me that day, but I heard Debra say that it was "my turn with Johnny," and I besides I had heard Allison tell Debra that she liked me because I seem to know a lot. "He's smart," Allison said. We got dressed and undressed, hugged and kissed, played cards, and I felt Allison's knobs, got increasingly, pushed and prodded by Debra who managed to play with my cock and Johnny's at the same time. Allison screamed at her to let go, and she said no, but did. I did it all. I followed Johnny who was then looking closely, fervently at that silken lips Debra had brazenly opened. She had sparse dark hair, but I remember she looked like a little girl except her lips were fatter and she was open. That was the first time I saw the "black hole" in a woman's sex. It drew me there and I would worship Allison as my first conquest although there had been others before her. While we rough housed, She climbed over Debra and I could see her nipples were hard and she was touching them, pinching them. Catching her under her legs so she wouldn't fall, I felt it letting my hand explore the outer lips and felt her button what I called it then. Innocently, I said, "Carla my other adventure that summer had one of those I said. She called it her tickler." Debra corrected me, saying it is called "a clitoris" or a "clit", "if you must know, and I rub it every day so it gets big like the ones in my father's medical books." I told her. I read the same books. When I said that Allison came up and leaned over all of us, and whisper that she had one too, and if I would forget about Debra she would show me, hitting me with a small pillow and laughing as we all fell together gathering almost as if we were inside a human hive. I pulled Allison down, and told her to show me. She did, revealed the inside of things. It all looked different than the books but the same. It was different also with Clara as I did not see much as Carla insisted on the dark. Amazed I marveled to Allison how her petals opened as she pulled the crease apart opening the pink center. They rise up like a fluted wave, I remembered thinking. I always knew the words for things, even then, and when I touched her leaves I feel the ordinary apple, and I remember this clearly, saying, as I rubbed the face of her sex gently exploring myself inside her. Just as I stopped touching, Allison squealed yes and then kissed me like I had never been kissed. All tongue and lips I felt as if I were being held under water, but instead of fearing suffocation, I found that I could breathe and all the world seemed spectacular. When I helped her up, always taught to be the gentleman by those same god fearing Christians who mocked the Jews and Niggers as they called them openly, I held my hands out to her, and we innocently mixed more than soul. We had actually done nothing, but explore the first day of Adam's words as we leaned against the wall kissing and tasting the other's moist skin and freckles. More would have happened I always imagined later when we had satisfied our curiosity not just about sex but each other. With the black maid Carla, who was an adult, from another world, as I saw it then, what we did in retrospect seemed more a selfish game that only Carla could win or lose. Sure, she had taught me a few things, but I was a boy to her. She kept the passion for herself, share it only from the outside, and didn't imagine I would know the difference. With Allison to my surprise I discovered that sex and its infinite imagination engenders intimacy and communion. What a better word than Eucharist I thought years later after Vatican II when the Catholic world revolted for a short time only to revert to a more subtle discrimination. Moving away from the window, Allison danced down the hallway twirling and when she came back, she held her night gown. "I want to wear this with you," she said. "I want to be beautiful and I have dreamed each night that I would meet a boy I could share touch." Standing there, three feet away, legs together, she looked like the young women you saw in the art books and in the Sears catalogue. Her breasts were small but round and she had the softest down rising up the middle of her cleft that I loved to brush gently with my fingertips. Years later, a lifetime later, when I met a woman with pubic hair like Allison I would immediately do the same thing. Not one woman minded. They all loved it. Slightly impatient, I moved towards her but she backed away a step. "I really want to put this on." I helped her with the top but she threw the bottom on the couch when she felt my hand holding her between her legs. I touched her pink slit and she looked me straight in the eyes, not away like before, and asked wordlessly, "what's next?" I was caught in my own unspoken lie. I had no idea, but expecting her to know, I didn't worry. She giggled when I told her the truth and kissed me and said, "I don't know either but I like the kissing." When I touched her thighs and legs while kissing, she closed her eyes, swooned, clutched, and tighten, released pressing her fingers into my arms marking them, drawing lines in my sunburn and tan. "That feels too good," she said, and pushed away again. "I might want too much more. I can't do that. I am afraid I will get . . . my sister is different she wants one." I didn't let her continue. I kissed her silent, and said we can do other things, but my heart fell when I said it knowing I was promising to not know her and have her be my first. Years later, I realized when I said it that I loved the feel of her silken nightgown in my hands and she felt so good happy that I didn't want her to be unhappy. Gathering it up in my arms, I touched her belly and felt her mound covering it with my hand, crooking a finger inside, like I had seen in those photos of my father and mother. I remembered them and used them as my guide. I confessed again to her that I had down much more that she could have expected and knew something she would really like. She told me never mind and kissed me harder. We will do it like the great books, the ones we both love. I will be Emma and you can be the Pierre or Sir Lawrence. Telling her about Carla, and how "she made me shoot a little," she said I did good for my age." With that, Allison touched my balls, asking why they were so small, and I had no answers all I could hear were Debra and Johnny humping body-to-body. Looking over Allison's shoulder I could see Johnny on top of Debra, her legs rapped around his ass. "Did you do it like that," Allison asked, turning and pointing to her sister. "No, he is not kissing her thing. She taught me how to do that." "Did Carla stink," Allison asked. "No, smelled like clean skin like you." "You are fresh Henry Whitman. I don't know what I want to say," pretending to be angry. "No, I meant it smelled good." How could a nigger smell good? "She did," I said. She smelled like almonds. "Maybe, you're right," Henry, "Papa says we have to be nice to the colored. Have a hard life, my daddy said. I like you Henry, you're older than you seem. I've done it too, but not with a boy, she said. I loved it, but it made me feel queer and I stopped when my cousin moved away. He was almost thirty and would make me suck it which I didn't mind but when he shot he tried to choke. "Ever do it with your sister," I asked. "No, not really." "Johnny says you do." "Yes," Allison confessed shaking her head and telling me that I would get no more secrets unless I told her mine. I told her the story about the vacuumed cleaner and the glass cocktail rods I stuck up my thing. She stood there waiting eyes closed, and I remembered what Carla said about a man needing to take what he needs. Pulling her down to the floor, I lifted her legs up and apart, and stood there wondering if I could really do it when she pulled me down by my shoulders, and taking my head rested it on her belly. "Just do it," she said. I opened her lips with my mouth like Clara taught gently. I licked away from her lips and teased with kisses, finally letting my mouth push the hood back exposing her button, I did it with the softest touch possible remembering Clara. She said do it easy but take it in your mouth like you are a man and not afraid. Clara said "I want to feel your lips and maybe your teeth and what this colored woman has taught you." Allison stopped me at first, said that is too much, too hard, and I softened but insisted and with my first full lick she pushed my head harder into her opening her legs full, gasping, and at that moment I pulled up and watched Johnny pull out of Debra just as he shot all over her legs. Debra who seemed quite used to the whole screamed at him, "why did you do that. I wanted you to do it for real." Ignoring Debra who was still mad at Johnny I explored Allison lips, sucking harder and harder, feeling her hands in my ears, pulling my hair, shaking her head, closing her eyes tighter and then screaming noting intelligible but a sound that meant she had started to roll under me feeling my mouth tighter, I refused to let go, and with a final suck, she almost stopped breathing, and when I tried to stop, she pushed my head closer, "don't you stop, no, you can't." Afterwards, half an hour or so later, she touched me, explored my cock and watched it explode. She smiled not at me, but my cock, ringing its head with her hands, rubbing what seemed like a lake of stuff on her lips and face. She said, "I used to do this for my cousin, you know the man who I sucked off twice a week and more when I babysat. I would suck after he did it and he would groan and try to make me stop but I held on. it was my revenge." Fascinated by her pubic hair, I remember combing it with my fingers. Allison almost shy, but not really, turned her head away while I licked and touched, but wouldn't let me try to do what Johnny did to Allison. There was not time left, and we had to go. Her mother would be back from the pool and we would get caught. I listened but didn't stop looking, and Allison liked it, and as long as I was content, she let me explore looking at me in the same way. Johnny told me later that he liked Debra better, as she let him do it longer. He said, "Allison didn't like to have it inside her. Thinks she might get a kid, and the younger one just wants more than her sister. He said that Allison told him that she liked you because you are cute and you kissed her there. Johnny asked me how I could do that, and I told him that a nigger woman showed me how. He said that explained it. All them niggers do it that way, and then I wondered may be that is a better way considering how excited the girls get. Even Debra when she saw me do it to her sister asked if I would do it to her, but we had no time, and Johnny kept her busy. At the door, leaving my balls behind, Allison said, "come back tomorrow. Mom and Dad are back in Dallas. The Maid will do what I tell her to do. Maybe you can do Debra." Before I could answer, and tell her sure, Allison said, "and I won't tell Johnny that way we can do it alone with you at the same time. He does what I say, and so does Debra. She smells great too, like I do." I stood there, amazed, knowing how she knew. Allison had held nothing back. We were both book smart lovers. Our curiosity and intelligence gave us information few adults accepted. We met at an important time. We both needed each other. We were reciprocals, and souls connected. "What did you do with Debra, I asked her, almost walking out the door, kissing her face and hands like I had seen in that great French movie with Maurice. "I kiss it like you did. It is small, although must be larger now, after what Johnny did." "I will, I said, be there. I left, and Allison walked back into the room, showed me her tits, and if its possible for a skinny and not shy fifteen year old, she shook them like the strippers I came to know much later in my life. "What did you do, I asked her while we stood on the porch not wanting to end any of it. "I saw it in a dirty movie. My Daddy's got one. Debra and I were hiding in the closet, and we watched her shake them at the men. I wanted to do that once, for a man I liked. "You like me, I asked. Of course silly, I really do, what do you think, I am a tramp. Go now," she banged playfully against my ass. "Get out of here. Have to get Johnny out of here too. Wait for him outside, OK. Don't want any trouble." "No," I said to myself. I didn't wait. Tyler Texas was truly innocent. Can I tell you another lie?. My grandmother worshipped these rich professional class neighbors and thought they were God fearing even if they were Jews, but then again, Henry, she would say, your Grandmother is Jewish, and I like her. Complicated lives we lived even back then when people seemed meaner but were more honest about what they really felt. The next day, I couldn't believe it. "We're going to Dallas today," Grandma said. "I have a job there; you can get the plane for NJ there. I don't have time to travel back and forth. Say good-bye to your friends today and be home by noon." I didn't really want to say good-bye. I had said them and I didn't want to see Johnny. I was too jealous that he would inherit both the girls. Years, later, I regretted not kissing Allison good-bye. I thought about that would have been imaginary "next time" for years. I knew if I had said good-bye that day in 1955, Allison would have kissed me like a man and not a boy. I knew if there had been that next time I would have fucked her like Johnny did Debra. Allison had bragged all summer about how she always kept her promises. She would have stood up, looked at my face, and smiled as men and women do when they greet their new lovers, for at least that first morning. She could have said, "Henry, I missed you, and kissed me hard between my cock and lips." At fifty-seven I create "that next day kiss" over and over like a porno loop. It became the opening scene of a great but never produced Hollywood movie, or it would have led to another life. What if my mother had let me live with my grandmother in Tyler, Texas. Would I have graduated from Columbia, City College, wrote novels and poetry. Would I have been able to write this story today? Maybe I would have become a rich oil man or a cowboy and broke my neck on a bucking Ford stock car. Maybe I would have died in Nam instead of coming back to the world. More American Adventures in erotica and other works by Sean Farragher: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Sean_Farragher/ Sean Farragher Poetry Site: http://www.farragher.com TxM6 Sites: http://www.taximurders.com http://www.taximurders.com/enfer http://www.taximurders.com/lcfallon http://www.taximurders.com/paradisio (forthcoming) -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> | | FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Archive: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository | |<http://www.asstr-mirror.org>, an entity supported entirely by donations. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+