Recent writing

Here goes: she slept with her stepbrother. She was 16 – and that’s what moved her to confess, my throwback to those halcyon days. He was 18. They hadn’t known each other long. Their parents had only married a year earlier. Her father, his mother. One night they took shrooms. Confessed everything there was to confess. Just barfed it all up. She’d been with only one other guy; he was a virgin. He feared he might be gay.

 

“Well,” she said, “let’s test that theory.”

 

Oh, it was awkward. Teenagers tend to be. But if she kissed him anything like she kissed me, I can imagine whatever insecurity he might have had went as limp as his dick was stiff. They were in her room. The place looked like the bowels of a cave; she had Goth aspirations. I pictured him, hands in her hair, pulling her close. They resisted each other in shifts. It’s just one of those things you’re not supposed to do.

 

“But it happens,” I said. “At least in porn movies it does.”

 

“Oh yeah.” She took another sip of her slushie. “That’s a whole damn genre. I can’t watch that crap. It’s just too – too –”

 

“Close to home?”

 

“Boring,” she said. “Just boring. How many variations can you see without it getting repetitive and stupid? You know?”

 

“You seem to have strong opinions on the matter.”

 

“It’s porn,” she said. “It means something.”

 

That further nailed it. I knew I liked this girl. Now I really knew. I felt my cells thrilling to the occasion, my dick shifting in my pants. Of course, that’s when my tongue decided to cleave to the roof of my mouth, shut down everything I wanted to say. The music switched from ironic to iconic: “Under Pressure,” the David Bowie and Queen version. Appropriate, yes. For certain.

 

Sip the slushie. Take a breath. That old breathing exercise my mother taught me: in for five, hold for seven, out for five. Get your head together, old boy. Get it together.