Reply #3: Actually, my knee

[ForrestGump]

can only take so much of you. Perhaps it's time to readjust, to another position, a little further north. In the interests of literature, of course. :D

Come closer to my center of gravity, my dear, and we'll see what comes up.

in the story, I mean... :loveya:

*ahem*

Oh, yes...that's nice. :D

*ahem*

What do youmean, you can feel them move when I cough? :o

*ahem*

Comfy? Good. me, too.

Book One, Chapter Seven


The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her ears, like Princess Leia, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small breasts, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little pussy. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha and Boris, escape from the drawing room.

"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.

"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.

"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the hussars."

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head. Hussies? What the f*** was he talking about?

"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation. Be all you can be, and all that."

He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both regarding him with a smile of approbation. Smarmy approbaters.

"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him. It can't be helped!" said the count, tugging his boulders and speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.

"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk - I don't know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor and demonstrated through involuntary body language that, indeed, he was unable to hide what he felt.

The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him and licking her wet, ruby lips, seemed ready at any moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature. Among other things.

"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up! It's an old war wound! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it," he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.

The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to young Rostov.

"Like, what a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so heinously dull without you, dude" said she, giving him a tender smile.

The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish smile, and a smiling -- well, never mind -- and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. Indeed, there was much smiling going on. It was a lot like a '60s love-in. In the midst of his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find and have his way with Sonya.

"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas' tumescence as he went out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;" * she added. Especially in certain states - just look at what happened to Jerry Lee back in the '50s, dog.

* Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.

"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them now! Thank God for menopause, I say. And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially when not properly medicated and especially just at this age, so dangerous both for girls and boys. Herpes and worse - not like in our day, when we just had the usual gonorrhoea and syphilis to worry about. Those were the days, my friend; we thought they'd never end."

"Surely you know that, if you remember those days, you weren't really there? And, as to the brats, it all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess, absently itching a suspicious-looking sore in the corner of her mouth. "Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them, an attitude reinforced by Dr Spock, the famed Vulcan pediatrician. "I know I shall always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."

"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the count, barely concealing his humor over her naiveté, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"

"Is is an hussar. or a hussar?." asked the countess.

"Hmmmmm," mused the count. "F***ed if I know, actually. Isn't anhussar some kind of brewing company?"

"F***ed if I know," replied the countess, "but I'll drink to that."

"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor, desperately trying to change the topic to a sane one; "a little volcano!"

"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons."

"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it at that age, let alone to get engaged."

"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."

"Yeah...again, Im say, look at Jerry Lee. And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' crotch, by reflex, and went on, evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be kissing or possibly, doing things that can't be described here lest the moderators through me out on my ass), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. (someone stifled a laugh at this point) Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter."

"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile, a smile that belied the horror of being locked in that f***ing broom closet night after night, never understanding the transgressions that took her there and vowing patient revenge. I'll show you "no wire hangers!," you evil witch. I'll show you.

But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone- the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said it, and they all felt awkward. They knew, the bourgeois pigs...they sensed her hate.

"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor, probing for a juicy tidbit.

"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera. "And stop picking your nose, please."

The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner. Glad to be out of that dysfunctional affair.

"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess, when she had seen her guests out.

As she busied herself with ordering the servants about, the count unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and eased back into his favorite chair, popping out the footrest and idly fondling the universal remote. He turned on the music and, leaping to his feet and clapping his hands, between attempts to pull his trousers back up, he belted out his theme song:

I got a woman, mean as she can be
I got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me

A black cat up
And died of fright
'Cause she crossed his path last night

Oh, I got a woman, mean as she can be
I got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me

She kiss so hard
She bruise my lips
Hurts so good, my heart just flips

Oh, I got a woman, mean as she can be
I got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me

The strangest gal
I ever had
Never happy unless she's mad

Oh, I got a woman, mean as she can be
I got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me

She makes love
Without a smile
Ooh, hot dog, it drives me wild

Oh, I got a woman, mean as she can be
I got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me

Sweating, hands sore from clapping, hips sore from gyrating, he finished with a flourish.

But no-one heard at all...not even the chair.