I don’t answer right away, but stare over past the freeway and hills in the distance. Suddenly, my mouth is so dry I feel like I just swallowed the whole sleeve of an itchy sweater. My neck isn’t flexed, but I’m sure I sense veins throbbing out both sides, about to pop. This is probably the least comfortable I’ve ever fucken been in my life, and I’m sure she knows.

She just looks at me, nibbling off the top of her bun, her eyes all big.

“Sex is very important,” I mumble, fighting not to tremble and stutter like a goof. I know I haven’t really clarified what I meant. And if there’s one thing I hate it’s anything cryptic . . . y’know, anything up its own ass enough to think it deserves to be mysterious. Fuck all that noise.

“I . . . don’t believe that,” she states, her voice a steady steamroller compared to my quivery mess.

“You don’t think sex is important?” God, I sound like a fucking moron.

“Hmmmm,” she thinks. “Maybe it depends. Like, I don’t know if you know, but my sister, Dee, is a virgin.” The way she over-pronounces the word makes it sound like a curse that needs some kind of deliverance ritual.

My mind effortlessly jogs back to my last jerk session that featured an imagined montage of Dee’s disproportionate ass coming at me from all kinds of angles (above being the one that really got me there). To think no one has yet to actually come in contact with those mythic toilet parts of hers is . . . well, it’s kind of astounding, and relieving, and a little funny, all at the same time. 

“Dee tells everyone she’s a virgin because she’s waiting for true love, or whatever. But I know her. The real reason is . . . it’s just, she doesn’t actually want to do it. She’s not sexual.”

“Like Tyler,” I say.

“Exactly! So, Dee makes it this big deal, but it’s all just to make herself seem special, y’know? It would be like someone who hates food becoming a dietician thought leader . . . starting a no-food movement with them at the center. It’s all for attention.”

“Fuck that,” I utter, still all shaky and shy like a bashful pansy.

“To me, sex isn’t that important,” Jolene concludes with a grin . . . though I know she’s about to go on (and I basically know what’s she’s gonna say). “I have sex.” She sits still and looks at me. “I like it. It’s fun. It’s no big deal. But why do you say it’s so important?”

I’m lost for words for a good twenty seconds of sheer, abject, painful, ugly, shameful awkwardness. My mind leaps to put together this bright picture of Jolene and a bunch of smiley guys (some other gals too) at the back of a school bus, all giggling and chirping along as they fuck each other’s brains out.

Goddamn I’m an old, worthless piece of disgusting shit.

But I did agree to be honest with her, so I say the first response that comes to mind (which is the truth, as far as I know): “Sex might be less important when you like it, and you’re having it, and you don’t have to worry about it, and it’s fun. That’s . . . that’s not the case for everyone.”

“That’s not the case for you?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“Why? I mean, you’re…”

“Married?” I conclude for her.

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have sex.” And there’s the bombshell. “Well, we do,” I correct myself, “but it’s not really something either of us want. Are you sure you’re ok me telling you all this?”

“Yes! Please do.”

I figure she’s right in wanting to know. The last thing I’d wish for Jolene would be to grow up, get married, and wind up disgusted by the idea of doing something she enjoys freely enough now for it to be no big deal. “Ok...” I begin, but wonder how to really start. A flashing image of my wife, Jolene’s aunt, naked sends more than a simple shiver down my spine. My face curls into a familiar snarl at the thought of decades’ worth of dumpy flab piled on a cow-like frame bent all funny and fucked by gravity. “...I love your aunt,” I say. “And I guess when I was younger, in my twenties, I had myself convinced I didn’t care whether I enjoyed sex with her.”

“You never found her attractive?” It’s a good question.

“Well,” I hem and haw, “I always liked her face. And there have been times when I liked her body, too. Parts of it. But I could never…” I hesitate.

“Tell me, Uncle X!” Jolene demands.

“I could never . . . put it in.”

“Like, you could never fuck her for real?”

“Exactly,” I show a sad smile, glad one of us had the balls to get to the real issue. “She’s always hated being . . . penetrated . . . and so we settled for doing . . . everything else.”

“Like, eating each other out? Handjobs? Stuff like that?”

“Right.” That mental picture of Jolene and co. having their joyful naked bus ride fun returns.

“But you want the real thing . . . sweet release, as they say.” Her eyes are all lit up like Christmas.

“Well, even the other stuff . . . hands and mouths . . . with her, it’s always sort of disgusted me in a way. And I never admitted that to myself.” I feel the truth coming out of me now like vomit. I know it can’t be stopped. “I always thought I was this good-guy-fucking-hero specimen who could go through life making everyone else happy.”

“But you only got more and more sad, and mad, and resentful?”

“Yeah. Hey, how’d you get to be so fucking smart?!”

She reaches across, and time stands still as her hand brushes my upper arm so lightly, so carefully and caringly. 

I melt inside, and feel the weight of my body pulling me to collapse like a puddle down through my seat and the floor of the car.

Why can’t I just die already?

“I see everything,” she says, proudly. I know its bullshit. I know everyone under thirty thinks they know fucking all there is to know. But strangely, I find myself wanting to encourage her in feeling that way, like she’s up on everything. I never want her whole view on the world to get blown apart by a shitty life the way mine has.

“We should get going,” I say as I pack burger wrappers into my last empty frosty cup, and reach for my keys.

“Ok.” She sounds upset.

I stop and look at her. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Well, I thought we were getting to something good there.”

“We were,” I assure her. “And we’ll keep talking. I…” But I can’t say it. The words stay lodged in my throat where a majority of my inner self must want them to remain choked back and unexpressed.

“You what?” she blurts with the force of an order I can’t refuse.

“I . . . I . . . I hope we can keep talking, and doing things, after today . . . y’know, for as long as we can.”

“Of course! But what do you mean ‘as long as we can’?”

Shit, she’s got me. How? Do I tell her? I have to, right? Total honesty . . . that’s the deal. I swallow a couple times, but then find myself telling her eerily calmly and smoothly, “Your Uncle X might not always be around.”

“You stop this fucking car right now!” she screams.