Message-ID: <40039asstr$1040652608@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: <anon584c@nyx.net> X-Original-Message-ID: <200212230813.BAA24436@nyx10.nyx.net> X-Nyx-Envelope-Data: Date=Mon Dec 23 01:13:41 2002, Sender=anon584c, Recipient=ckought69@hotmail.com, Valsender=anon584c@localhost From: anon584c@nyx.net (Uther Pendragon) Reply-To: anon584c@nyx.net X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 01:13:41 -0700 Subject: {ASSM} rp "Forget All That 06" {Pendragon} (MF rom wl lac) [6/12] x-asstr-message-id-hack: 40039 Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 09:10:08 -0500 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/Year2002/40039> X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, RuiJorge IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do something else. This material is Copyright, 1997, by Uther Pendragon. All rights reserved. I specifically grant the right of downloading and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long as this notice is included. Reposting requires previous permission. If you have any comments or requests, please E-mail them to me at anon584c@nyx.net. If you save erotic stories, and you prefer that other household members not be exposed to them, I recommend that you use a file zipped with the PKZip option -spassword. (Where the password that you choose would, presumably, not be "password.") This still leaves the titles of the files and the fact that they are encrypted open to anybody. All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. FORGET ALL THAT by Uther Pendragon anon584c@nyx.net Part Six: "Let's leave the rocker upstairs today," I said to Bob. "The spot is hardly noticeable," he said. Well, *I* knew that it was there. Katherine wouldn't say a word even if she noticed it. So I would be sure that she had. "I won't sit in it down there." Thus there was no reason for him to carry it down. We didn't go down for breakfast until The Kitten was fed and mostly cleaned up. After breakfast, I bathed her in the kitchen sink. Katherine took her namesake from my hands as soon as she was dry. "Come to Grandma Brennan," she said. "Let's go get a diaper." I cleaned up the sink and took the special soap and shampoo back upstairs. Bob was settling down with the work we had brought along with us. The two of us are collaborating on a book. I start with photocopies of documents in French, typed, handwritten, or both. I type this into a word processor, spellcheck it (there are French spellcheckers, luckily), see whether the misspelling was mine or in the original, and turn out a fair copy. Then I translate the fair copy, a quite literal translation. Bob looks over the English and sees whether it makes sense in the context. Sometimes he catches a real blooper that way, but that isn't the only problem. Diplomacy has a technical language just like any other specialized field. It also has a formally-agreed-upon set of translations. That way, a treaty translated from French into German will be translated into the same English from both the French and the German. A smooth-flowing English sentence which translates the French sentence acceptably for a novel may not be the right translation. A relatively clumsy sentence might be needed in order to accommodate the agreement that *this* French term is identical to *that* English term in every case. Bob catches a lot of that. We have a diplomatic dictionary, and I have immersed myself in it so I can catch more of these on second rereading. Bob knows more about the Fashoda Incident, when the United Kingdom came perilously close to war with France, than almost anybody. By now, even I know more about the details than most historians. But details are only part of it; how governments reacted depended on party histories and individual biographies. These depended, in part, on previous issues. The popular press was important by that time, but salons were still important as well. Bob has that context, and I don't. And the Fashoda incident was never the only thing on the plate of the diplomatic corps. We were not printing the thousands of pages of the trove, or a very great fraction of it. However, we were printing the entire document when we printed any part of it, and arguments over tariffs and incidents of prominent men of one country who had run afoul of the law in another were in some reports which also involved Fashoda. Moreover, while the Fashoda Incident was the most important event of that brief period, we aren't simply covering that. There were other matters going on simultaneously, and documents which shed important light on those will be in the book. These can be real bears. A question about the relationship of Germany and Italy or about Dutch colonial problems can be illuminated by correspondence in the files of the French foreign office. Simply figuring out if that information reveals anything requires an intimate knowledge of what is known now and what is in dispute now. Fashoda was, at least, most critically a conflict between France and the UK. Diplomatic reports from other countries, most especially Germany were relevant, however. Which means that we have to check the reports in our documents against anything which is publicly known about the reports to other governments. Bob can deal with German when he has to, but those sources might be hard to find in Michigan. So I translate more documents than we are going to use, and Bob goes through those translations and marks them for inappropriate terms. Then he evaluates whether they illuminate any outstanding questions. Then he marks down a load of questions on note cards. Then he takes those note cards into the library to find some answers. Well, as Ecclesiastes might have mentioned, there is a time for filling out note cards and there is a time for crossing off note cards. Without a library, this was a time for Bob to read the literal translation and fill out note cards. I was available for consultation, "Could this sentence mean...?" Otherwise, I was off work until I was back at my little computer. Katherine had The Kitten; I started lunch. "Oh, you shouldn't have, dear," Katherine said. I actually should have been doing more of the work, and said so. "Nonsense, dear. I'm a teacher for more than half the year; I enjoy being a cook on breaks." (I can believe that she enjoyed making the fancy chicken for the night before. But tuna salad?) "Although I admit that I enjoy being a grandmother more. Encourage her to have children young, dear. Grandmothers have much more fun than mothers." "We could form a child-care partnership," I said. "I'll do the breastfeeding, and you change the diapers." Her laugh admitted my point. "You weren't including pregnancy and labor in that balance, dear. Besides, what is joy for a day can be drudgery for a year. You and Bob used to go camping, for example." A good point. It's fun, but I wouldn't want to live in a tent for the entire year. "Playing with The Kitten is fun, changing diapers compensates for it. Besides, she is our granddaughter; part of the care is our responsibility." She put The Kitten down on the quilt and called Bob. "Tuna salad," he said. He added "Y'know, we hardly ever have that any more," before spreading his bread with the catsup he adds to it. Said catsup is the reason that I stopped making it entirely when I was suffering the nausea of pregnancy. I never did like to look. "You never met a meal you didn't like, dear," his mother said. (Oh yes, he has! But I will admit that he has a wide- ranging appetite.) "Isn't it a joy to cook for appreciative eaters, dear? Now Vi (I must get into the habit of calling her Kathleen before tomorrow) went through those stages of regarding each calorie with horror, but she never went off particular things. Bob was a fussy eater when he was very small, but from age nine he ate almost everything which was on his plate." "And anything in the refrigerator which wasn't clearly marked," I put in. "Well yes," she said. "I learned to skip those articles on clever things to do with leftovers. You know, a third world family couldn't have eaten out of the *Brennan* garbage can when he was home. It would have starved a goat." Now, while Katherine went from huge plenty to tight budgets, cheese-paring would never have made any appreciable difference. From the perspective of our early marriage, however, leftovers were a resource, not a problem. Bob had tried, though; I'll give him that. Still, his appetite had been a bone of contention. I wished that I could change the subject; Bob must have felt the same way. "I think this thing is coming together," he said. Chez Brennan, you can change the subject with a nonsequitur. "We have enough on Fashoda to make the book significant, and enough on the rest to make the book of general interest. All the dreaming I did of you up in that room there, I never dreamt of you as a research assistant." I doubt that he dreamed of me as a cook or fellow parent either. I know he didn't dream of me as house cleaner, cleaning isn't one of his dreams. "Has she been a great help, dear?" Katherine asked him. "That's one way of putting it," he answered. "The way the book is shaping up, I may contribute almost as much as she. When we envisioned it, it was her book. 'Help' doesn't quite cover it. "You know it's odd. When you two financed the tape," (He meant an entire taped course of French with supporting materials) "we all spoke of it as Jeanette's education. Some tiny fraction for her. Without it, however, she might have gone on with the literature." (I doubt that; but any "might have been" might, after all, have been.) "I very much doubt that I could have written the dissertation without that and the radio and the magazines. When we got to Paris, Jeanette knew what was going on. She was au courant in a way that most French majors wouldn't have been. The magazines and the short wave taught her about twentieth century France in a way that nothing else could have." "Those magazines were a success then, dear?" "It was more than Bob said," I answered. "Every year, there was a subscription to a different magazine, a new subject area, a new version of the language. I hadn't learned how to deal with archivists nor how to read bureaucratic reports, but I had learned how to deal with a new subject. My French was over- correct, of course; but I'd learned some of the slang. The course was business-centered, not tourist-centered; that helped." "Russ wondered whether the gift of the magazines has gone on too long." I'd wondered the same thing. I'd stopped reading the magazines during my pregnancy. I had translation to do and literature to read. I'd stored the backlog and was reading about half the new issues before the next one came. "It's clearly too late to worry about this year," Bob said. "There is a little backlog now. Nice to have someone else in the house storing old magazines. By the summer, Jeanette will have some idea of her new pattern of living. If the backlog is larger, then she can read it down after the last subscription expires. For that matter, Dad must be running out of possible magazines. We have money, Jeanette can subscribe to one of her favorites from the selection that he gave her. "The real gift was the experience. That is permanent. On the other hand if he gave her *Science*, ..." "He is adamant, dear. The gift is to her. A lever to persuade her to read the *Scientific American* might be a possible gift to you, but taking your side against her isn't in the cards." "My father's taking my side against anyone isn't in the cards," said Bob. "Now, dear," Katherine said. Bob's father would back him against the world. He would not, however, say so to Bob's face. "But Bob is right about the magazines," I said. "They were an incredible gift. So was the radio." "And the tape recorder," Bob put in. "He always sees how things will work together." The tape recorder plugged into the radio so that it could record programs directly. It had two speeds, and I spent months listening to slowed-down tapes of RFI news reports. Then, it all came together, and I could follow it in real time. "He also wondered about your subscription, dear," Katherine said to Bob, "even if he thought of it after your last birthday. It was one thing to give a child going away to college who would have ignored the world if it hadn't been shoved down his throat. After all this time, it might feel as bad as giving the French version of *Scientific American* to Jeanette." Now these subscriptions aren't our only gifts from Bob's father, but they are significant ones in terms of cost. "I've thought about that for two reasons," Bob said. "Not about it being shoved down my throat. He was right in the past. That wasn't where I would have spent my money. I never objected to reading *Newsweek*, though. I did think that it might be time for an assistant professor to buy his own. "Then this fall, I was ready to drop the magazine altogether. Four pages to Mother Theresa, and 24 to Princess Di. Does anyone have a sense of proportion? They tried to make it up later, but that was so clearly covering their asses that it made my opinion worse." This was the first time that I had heard him express this, but it didn't surprise me. I had had the same reaction at first. "My first response was just like yours," I said. "But look. If one of your fellow teachers told you that his neighbor had just died, and he was devastated, would you tell him that *you* didn't know the man and so *he* shouldn't be concerned?" "Of course not," Bob said. "But Di was a public figure." "Sort of. But she was a major part of the experience of most of the people we know. She was hardly part of our experience at all. You can't judge their response any more than you can judge the response of the man at work who lost a neighbor." "Most of the people we know don't read the tabloids," Bob said. "They watch TV. Many of them read *People*. Bob, there are parts of current common life in which we simply don't participate." "Not even your French magazines?" he asked. "When she died, of course," I said. "And she was frequently in *Paris Match*. But that was years ago, and I was mostly learning the words. Some of them weren't even in the dictionary. Do you remember the Frenchwoman in Boston that I traded language lessons with?" "Right. I keep imagining somebody from France trying to read *Variety*." "*Paris Match* is not anywhere near that bad," I said. "Or the sports pages," Bob said. "But do you really think that we're out of it without the boob tube." "In some ways. And we haven't gone to the movies in ten months. Not that movies showed Princess Di, nor that this is your fault." I had called moviegoing off one night *after we had put on our coats* to go to the theater. Pregnancy has many drawbacks, but it does have its privileges. "I'd hardly call it a fault," he said. "Movies are entertainment, not duty. When you stopped enjoying sitting still that long, they had no value to us. Anyway, my fellow faculty members don't go to movies, they go to 'fillums.' But they do watch TV." "Y'know, dear," his mother said, "your father thinks that you are cutting off your nose to spite your face." "So he's told me. 'What everybody knows is important,' he says, 'even when it isn't true -- especially when it isn't true.' Of course, he was only talking about network news. He does have a point. As doesn't he always?" "Well that is a connection to the common mindset," I said. "You'd study what people read in the 19th century." "Yeah, but the twentieth isn't my century. Are you suggesting that we get a TV set?" "I've thought about that, too," I replied. "The Kitten will want one in a few years." "Then you think we should?" Bob asked. "I think we shouldn't. Let her ask for one and learn that it's a juvenile thing. Not grow up seeing her parents hooked on it." Bob's laugh was explosive and a little messy. "Just be glad," he said, "that I was drinking water when you said that, not chewing food." "We'll have to teach her not to talk with her mouth full, too." Suddenly I was overwhelmed with all the things that she would need to learn. "Unlike her father," said Bob. "Oh well. 'But Mom, if Bob didn't eat and talk at the same time, he wouldn't have time for anything else.'" This was a famous quotation from Vi. It is a bone of contention to this day. She feels it unfair that she had been sent to her room for the night, and then quoted with glee for years. "Your sister was being nasty, dear," Katherine said. "Thank you." "She didn't say inaccurate," I pointed out. This time Bob's laughter was unencumbered. "I'm glad I married you," he said. "That's convenient, dear," Katherine told him. "Do you want me to feed The Kitten again, dear." The latter was to me. "Please, today it is vegetables. Nothing is open, so choose anything but peas." The last vegetable had been peas. "You know, dear, I swore that I wouldn't be that sort of grandmother, much less that sort of mother-in-law." "I'll take no offense at *suggestions*," I said. Actually, Katherine had raised two fine kids. I've wanted to be like her for years. I would be glad for her advice. "It's not even a suggestion," she said. "It's a question. I know the medical profession is as faddish about these things as anyone is about anything. In my day, however, a baby seven months old would be eating supplements two times a day, maybe more often. I don't doubt that you alone can provide all the nutrients she needs. I just wonder if the rule has changed. I know you do what you think is best for her." "The rule hasn't changed," I said. "It's just such a struggle with her. And they do say that the baby knows what she needs." "Why don't you watch me this time?" When the time came, she put The Kitten in her high chair. She got a small spoonful. Then she made a funny face involving a gaping mouth at The Kitten. The Kitten, as she has done for months, made the funny face back. The spoon went in The Kitten's gaping mouth and turned. Katherine and The Kitten closed their mouths. Katherine removed the spoon, scraped up the spillage, and made the silly face again. The process worked. When The Kitten forgot to swallow, Katherine said "Nice Kitten" or "pretty girl." Then she stroked The Kitten's neck. She wiped The Kitten's face occasionally, although less often than I would have. The Kitten grabbed for the spoon as often as she does with me; but, because Katherine only aimed at an open mouth, this caused much fewer problems. She stopped in the middle to play This Little Piggy. After a bit, the Kitten made hunger signs with her mouth, just as she would have if she'd been stopped in the middle of nursing. Katherine went back to feeding her. I left to repair my crushed ego. The Kitten's next feeding, however, was one which Katherine couldn't manage. Whether or not my brain matched hers, my mammaries were much more functional. Bob went with his father to pick up a tree after supper. When The Kitten wanted to participate in setting it up, I took her upstairs. "Quelquefois, mon enfant, nous sommes les vedettes; quelquefois nous sommes l'audience." She was not impressed. She wants to star all the time; and, so far, she mostly had. "When you are under one," I told her, "being counts for everything. When you are approaching thirty, you have to do things well to impress anybody." I sounded just like a mother. Actually, I sounded just like *my* mother. And I didn't want to be like her. "Ne tracasse pas. Tu seras toujours la vedette en mon drame." And we played active games until she just wanted to cuddle, and then we cuddled until it was time to nurse. I was in the rocking chair when Bob came in. He kissed The Kitten on the top of her head and then me on the top of mine. Seeing we were preoccupied with each other, he lay across the room watching us finish up. "Je vous aime," he said as he took The Kitten to the changing table. I left for the bathroom in slacks and robe. This time, I was careful about the diaphragm. "Oh Bob," I said when I came back in, "Kiss me." He got up, came over, and tried to reach my mouth. "No. Like you did before." "When before?" "In the rocker. On my head." He kissed me as I had asked. Then he hugged me lightly around the shoulders. "Do you need cherishing, ma femme?" I nodded yes. He kept kissing me above the ear line, murmuring in the pauses. "I love you," he said. "The Kitten loves you. My family loves you. You found your way around on the Metro. You found your way around on the MBTA. You found the handwriting book. You found work every time you looked. You've kept The Kitten healthy and reasonably happy. Your mother can't get you, and she can't even look at The Kitten if she's nasty to you." "Bob, do you think that that's my problem?" "How should I know? It's one possible worry. You know the other half of it?" he asked. "What?" "Everybody's very sweet," he said, "about relieving you of The Kitten's messy diapers, but you're left with her messy moods. She's a good kid, and happy most of the time. But when she's grumpy it's back to mommy. And it's unavoidable. But we're going back home in a week or so. You'll have her sunny moods then. You'll have her full diapers, too." He had a point. Two points: it was happening, and it was unavoidable. The Kitten gets cranky in the late afternoons and again shortly before bedtime. Then she doesn't like her own company, and abhors the company of strangers. That was when I was getting her. The only time I got The Kitten's good moods was when I nursed her. Any time that something was wrong, she wanted Maman. And, by God, when she wanted Maman, she would get Maman. Sharing her bad moods among adults might be fair to them, but being fair to The Kitten came first. And I wanted her to experience her grandparents. I even wanted her to experience my parents to a limited extent. It was part of who she was. Then too, I *was* getting a respite this trip. The Kitten's good moods are a joy, but twenty-four hour responsibility is not. "You are the smartest husband in the whole world," I told him. Partly, I meant it; partly I was parodying him. "Indubitably the smartest husband of Jeanette Brennan," he said. He tugged at my robe. "Isn't this awfully heavy?" He helped me out of my robe and then my nightgown. Once in bed, he continued in the "cherish" mode until I was totally relaxed, then through my relaxation and into an entirely different sort of tension. His teasing finger stroked up my valley almost to my center of feeling and then returned to my entrance. I moved my hips up and down trying to get that extra millimeter which provides so much more satisfaction. He kissed me deeply before withdrawing his tongue. Covering my mouth in this way, he finally stroked the entire length of my valley. I moaned into his kiss and moved my hips faster. "Do you want me inside?" he asked. I think he knew the answer, but he likes to hear it. "Oh yes," I said. "Now, please." When he removed his hand, I managed to still my motions. When he had climbed between my legs, I spread them wider. He stroked up and down my valley before pausing to look into my eyes. Then he entered me, filled me, pinned me to the mattress. He blew me a kiss before beginning his slow strokes within. I let my legs ride up on his hips and held them there when he withdrew. The exquisite sensations from my entrance took me back up the heights. I clasped my legs about his waist and crossed them behind his hips. The feeling of his motions within, filling me and rubbing against me, were a comfort, then a joy, then an itch. I needed more and more. "Vite, vite," I begged him. I pulled him tighter into me with my heels against his hips. Then something swept through me. It spread my legs far apart and slammed them down on the bed. It raised my hips off the bed and impaled my groin onto his maleness. It shook me. It tightened my voice into a screech. It scorched its way through me from my scalp to my toes. Then it left me completely at peace while Bob grunted above me and squirted within me. I could make absolutely no movement as he softened and left me, panted above me, rolled off me, hugged me awkwardly. Much later, we dabbed at the mess which had already soaked into the sheet or dried on us. "I love you," he said. "Bob could you?" "I Robert, that one?" How could I ever have called him insensitive? I snuggled into the sleep position, then nodded. "I, Robert, take thee, Jeanette, to be my lawful wedded wife. To...." Continued in Part Seven. FORGET ALL THAT Uther Pendragon anon584c@nyx.net 1997/12/27 1999/12/30 2000/10/01 2002/12/23 This is the sixth segment of the last story (so far) in a series of stories about the Brennans. More of the story can be found at: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/fat_c.htm Parts 7-9 The first story in the series is: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/forever.htm "Forever" The directory to the entire series is: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan.htm Brennan Stories Directory The directory to all my stories can be found at: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/index.htm -- 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> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}| |Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+