The grave of the beautiful cousin
Act I of an erotic tale of my youth.

- "Ready or not ready, I go" We call that, play hide and search or more familiarly to play tag.

The pawn left the house quickly, looking all around, he went anywhere searching for the other members of the group who hid here and there, then he had to oust them out of their hiding. For a short moment, it was anguish; he had to find, as quickly as possible, one or the other participants who were in hiding somewhere, to break this sudden silence, the unusual solitude that invaded us, to hear again the rumors, the shouts, the reassuring turmoil of our childish games.

- "Ready or not ready, I go," Denise a pretty cousin, was acting, that day, as the pawn.

I did not like playing the role of the pawn. I preferred to be in hiding, to be the hunted animal, trying to thwart the hunter, while he moved silently, with an air like a marten, anxious, just a step away from me but without seeing me. I could touch him, but I never did, and I enjoyed this sudden mastery, of being able to escape from the world of the living beings as if I was invisible. Countrary to the others, who let themselves be easily find and burst out suddenly, in laughters and an indescribable din, breaking the silence of the others and forcing them to quickly unmask themselves, I could escape from my den silently, reach the house without disrupting the silent hunting of the pawn. I did not enjoy the company of others in the impregnable refuge that I always chose.

We had no habit of associating with the girls, we preferred games among boys.

These male game's that allowed us to experiment with bravery, boldness, danger, a certain brutality, carters' language, rape of certain taboos, all those things far away from the neighbourhood of girls. Sometimes they approached us, they seemed to participate in our games from far away, or they infiltrated there hypocritically, we always repelled them with vigour.

This day, the boys had yielded, to play tag, a rather neutral game where boys and girls could feel at their ease without seeming to betray their sex; and we gather together, boys and girls, cousins and cousins' girls, brothers and sisters, neighbours and neighbours-girls.