Kitchen Boy

She turned onto Rodney Street, and the modest house that was the home of Professor Eltin Schreiber of the Foreign Language Department, Ellen Schreiber of the Biology Department, and their adopted son, the Sire, though his given name was Khalil, and everyone still called him by his childhood nickname, Kai-Kai. Checking her cell phone she saw that she was right on time —7:15 a.m. She was welcomed in by Kai-Kai’s parents, who were leaving to go to a conference down in Redding. Glad to be in from the cold, she took off her coat and hat and gloves and walked through the modestly but tastefully decorated little house to the dining room, where she saw the Sire, and his older sister Elaine, and to her surprise, Marikit, the cute Pilipino freshman who was his undeclared but devoted girlfriend.

They were at the end of breakfast, Elaine and Marikit finishing off eggs and pancakes. Elaine offered Angela a muffin. She declined, though she was sure it was delicious. Of course this breakfast was made by Kai-Kai, who loved to cook and was great at it. Another of his stereotypical feminine talents. His pancakes, part whole wheat and part rye, were locally famous. The gentle teenager was a born housewife. Yet on this morning Kai-Kai himself, getting ready for his draining, was restricted to his protein and zinc milkshake. It stood half-finished next to his laptop. As always his bare skin, with its all-over “winter tan”, contrasted with the clothes worn by everyone else.

He was busy on something and from his first words Angela knew what it was. “But eukaryotes are —”

”What we call plants and animals,” Elaine said. Elaine was visiting this weekend, off from her residency in internal medicine at a hospital in Red Bluff. Kai-Kai, whatever his other misfortunes in life, was lucky to have a mother and a sister as doctors, to help him with his Biology homework. Ironic, everyone knew, since his own biology was studied so intensely and continuously.

“And prokaryotes are —what?”

“Bacteria and archaea.”

“Archaea —one-celled?”

“Yes, but they don’t have to be.”

Kai-Kai sighed and took another sip of his shake. Then skillfully tapped on the keyboard. His touch typing was perfect. In a previous life he could have been a secretary —another of his traditionally feminine talents. Angela heard sliding and clicking from below and knew it was the boy’s toes operating the mouse which he had placed on the floor. Ordinarily a mouse slows down a fast typist but Kai-Kai, never having worn shoes, had learned to use his feet almost like hands.

Finally staring at the screen he said, “I’m sorry but. . . this so confusing.” Biology was a required subject. Kai-Kai had no knack for it. His major was Library Science, with a minor in Dance.

Elaine said, “It has to do with cell structure. Not outside appearance.”

“Are they all diploid?”

“No. Chromosomes are only in eukaryotes.”

“But they all have DNA.”

“In prokaryotes they’d be haploid. Like your sperm.”

Angela thought this was meant as a joke —Kai-Kai had the most important and minutely studied sperm in the world —but the boy just knitted his brow and kept typing. Then he looked up at the clock. “Thanks, Lainie.” He shut down his laptop, brought the mouse up onto the table, finished his shake, and collected everyone’s dishes and went to the sink. It seemed unfair for the cook to also clean up, but it was just something that Kai-Kai did. A born housewife, cooking and cleaning.

Angela looked at the naked boy from behind as he used the gritty sponge to clean the dishes. It was a beautiful body as nature intended, uninterrupted from his short hair down to his tough soles, a light all-over tan (it got darker in the summer), his body thin but lightly muscled. He was a little short for his age; this was probably as tall as he was going to get. If she looked closely between his legs she could see his soft penis poking down, pressed against the cabinet below, the glans almost halfway to his knees. What a wonderful male body. Angela chided herself. She was told over and over: Don’t fall in love with the Sire. But she couldn’t help herself. Though it was a kind of puppy love. She was in love with his cuteness and gentleness. She was still engaged, to Michael, who was currently in Hong Kong working on his degree in International Finance. She texted with Michael almost every day. They both came from traditional Chinese families and their pairing was arranged, albeit informally, by their respective parents, but they also loved each other and had a lot of good memories of their times together. But it was like memories of another world. Her world now was the world of the Project, an expanding worldwide network, and here at Semillas University she was at the very center of it.

The Project was tremendously important for mankind. Kai-Kai had a unique gene in his DNA. Though his own blood was ordinary, his children’s blood plasma would contain the long-sought-after immunorestorative gene, from which a vaccine would be made which would save tens of millions of lives on a worldwide basis. That is, if the “25 - 25” goal was reached —Kai-Kai inseminating enough women so that the 25,000th conception took place by the time of his 25th birthday. But the people in this house at the center of it all were laid-back, no sense of crisis, no stressing under any crushing burden. They were happy people and it was actually a pretty ordinary scene, considering.

Marikit’s pursuit of Kai-Kai was an example. Angela looked over discreetly and saw that she was watching the naked boy too, with young lust tempered by her strict upbringing. Marikit adored Kai-Kai; they went together to all types of events, and their relationship was so cute and innocent that it made older people joke about being nauseated by it. Such obvious virgins, testing the waters of romance for the first time. Odd to think of Kai-Kai as a virgin —he had ejaculated into thousands of women who came here from all parts of the world, and at last count had fathered 1,875 children —but everyone did, because mentally that’s what he was. He had never had a sexual relationship.

His cute girlfriend stood up, with difficulty, as Kai-Kai dried his hands on the washcloth and came over to her. He looked at her with a complicated glance and turned his back to her. Then, realizing something, he said, “Sorry, Marikit.”

“It’s o.k.”, the Pilipino girl said.

And now to Angela’s surprise the naked boy crawled on top of the table, got up there on all fours, and placed his head down as he reached back with his hands to spread his butt cheeks. Marikit explained, “I hurt my knee in basketball yesterday so I have to stand up when I put the plug in,” as she limped toward the head of the table. Angela detected the aroma of a coconut enema as the Sire spread his anus for all to see. Just another daily event at the Schreiber house, their naked son spreading his butt on top of the table. Angela knew what was coming, though: the first part of today’s draining, specifically the draining of the Sire’s pre-ejaculatory fluid, though everyone used the much shorter slang expression, “pre-cum”.