Lust is primal. Lust, like violence, must be repressed to maintain civil order. We're born with lust. We die with lust. Adults deny the ability of precious children to wander into black fantasies or to seek unfamiliar excitement. But lust, like all primal urges, unites us; boys and girls, young and old, humans and animals. No one is spared.

I haven’t read Nabokov's “Lolita,” but I saw both movies in a college course titled “Controversies in Contemporary Cinema.” Some would call me a heretic if I suggested that Adrian Lyne's made-for-TV interpretation is better than Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece... but it's true. Lyne bests Kubrick in the first ten minutes of film by including Humbert Humbert's adolescent romance and depicting his deplorable deeds in golden light. Of course it’s unfair to compare the movies as Kubrick’s version was made during the era of the Hollywood Hays Code which restricted the sensuality needed to tell the complete story. But this limitation doesn’t change the fact that Lyne’s version is a more realistic portrayal of forbidden lust.

Now I'm faced with the decision to play it safe (to preserve the accessibility of my memoir; to keep you, the reader, comfortable in your favorite reading chair) or to delve headfirst into the taboo ramifications of Mara's power. Forgive me, friend, for siding with controversial honesty over benign accord.

I tiptoed backward from the spiral stairs until my butt rammed into the couch. I extended my neck like a collapsable telescope and caught a glimpse of Mara’s head and shoulders as she danced and changed outfits on the lid of the costume chest. She wiggled. She mouthed words to a silent song. She twirled steadily like a ballerina on pointe, scanning the forest horizon from her new vantage.

Mara emerged a moment later as a fairy. A light-green dress trailed in billows as she descended the stairs with whimsical grace; her cream legs flittered behind the black rungs as she approached the bottom step, then she slid in my arms, leaned back, and I dipped her. (I wanted to explore--to douse my senses in fleshy girl--but I held back; I bound my desire to taste the same way I sat on my hands in the tree.)

“Action!” Left, right, smile, frown... “Cut!”

Next, Mara became a chimera of halloween clichés; a witch's hat over a black wig, Whit's mad-scientist robe from last fall's zombie movie, knee-highs with green and orange stripes, a silver-painted squirt gun in her right hand and a devil's trident in her left (”Get behind me, Satan!” I suddenly recalled. “Tempt me no more!”). Eyeliner raccooned her sockets, white powder deadened her cheeks, and when she smiled, Dracula's plastic fangs had replaced her pearls.

“I vant to suck yer blood!” Mara spread her arms and lunged, pinning me to the back of the beat-up sectional in the center of the ballroom. I playfully pushed her away (if only to have a reason to touch) but she strengthened her goofy assault, stretched her mouth, and gorged my neck.

Shoot it.

Cut it.

Next!

Shorts to her bellybutton covered in neon splats of paint, and a tee, hot-pink, knotted below her chest. A zebra-print snap bracelet on her left wrist; a pony-tail stemming from the top of her head.

Next!

Multi-colored tights and a leather skirt; eyes hiding behind blue-tinted shades; balled-up somethings beneath a suede vest and white undershirt... a bold preview of future cravings.

Next!

Braided pigtails, OshKosh overalls and a simple cotton tank; a portrait of farm-girl innocence that I longed to corrupt in a field of corn, cuddling, as we try to distinguish real constellations from random groupings of stars. (The warm sensations returned and I longed to make my nocturnal passions real.)

I forgot about the camera tests, reveling instead in Mara's sensual personas; molding her style to my liking, sending her back to the tower for more of this, less of that (”Why don't you try them together?”); spoiling my standards for the female form and defining--forever--my perceptions of beauty.

“Last one,” she called before she emerged; a baroque angel with a pipe-cleaner halo and an inside-out tee (my night shirt twenty-pounds previous) hanging three inches above her knee. Strapped to her back were wings of white lace and feathers, the origin of which I cannot recall. Her celestial demeanor was so believable that my heart ached at the possibility of flight; that Mara might soar away and never return. She wore lip gloss too (watermelon flavored, I could smell it) and I recalled our touching noses in the tree and wondered where exactly these new conceptions were forming; to bend that halo, to gnarl my fingers against her scalp, to suck the shine from those pink lips.

The reverence I showed for Roselyn's thigh had been desecrated in less than two weeks. It was Mara's doing.

“I want to kiss you,” I said, an innocent incarnation of my nasty thoughts.

She leaned against the wall. I knew I made a mistake. 

“James...” she said. “You're like my brother now.”

Ouch. I leaned my head against my camera.

“If your parents found out, I'd be so embarrassed.”

“Dad's at work and Mom's meeting with Fantasia's birth mom. They won't be back till--”

Mara was small against the great white wall. Her wings--which seemed real only moments ago--were merely a costume mashed against the brick. Her eyes shifted to some arbitrary point across the room. “I don't think it's a good idea.”

I don't have the talent to describe that feeling of rejection, nor the resulting urge to take what I wanted from that girl, the ultimate tease. My only desire stood an arm length away; lonely shoulders propped against the wall, a smudge of mascara below her left eye, mysteries hidden beneath angelic garb that could only be explored in the flesh, not in some encyclopedia illustration or my father's cold speech.

Before you judge me, understand that these desires were not selfish. The concept of mutual exploration was the only concept that excited me. If a first kiss or experimental foray made Mara uncomfortable, it would defeat my purpose and defile my pleasure. All I could do was sit on my hands and wait for the angel to let me in.

But was it too late? Did I already screw things up? By asking for a kiss, did I prove I was no different than the boys she called 'ferrets' or Ms. Grisham or everyone else who fell slave to her charm?

I won't describe that itch again in this book, but as you continue with my story and read about my interactions with Mara--even in the tenderest moments when a dirty thought would be sacrilege--it's reasonable to assume I was battling these same feelings.

What separates me from the real perverts? The fact that my fantasies grew as I did. Today, when I think about Mara as a child, I recall her playfulness; her ability to connect instantly with the plight of a Saturday-morning cartoon; the way she called refrigerators “Frigidaires” and butterflies “flutter-bys”; her kindness...

Today, my feelings toward that child involve a savage need to protect--to keep pure--but, as a little boy with limited knowledge of the developed female form, Mara Lynn was eighty-five pounds of goddess perfection.

*  *  *

(Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.)