“Good for him, I guess.”
“He’s going to be gone until Friday.”
“Good for you.”
Only then do I see where this is going. A sexy lightbulb moment flashes, and when it does, I get up and jump so high I think I might’ve left an Aaron-shaped hole in the clouds. But when I come back down, I remember something very crucial: Fuck, I have no idea how to have sex.
3
MANNING UP
I am so screwed later on.
Okay, poor choice of words, but yeah, I’m going to give it my best, and once Genevieve sees how seriously I’m trying she’ll probably laugh so hard she’ll cry and I’ll cry too but not because I’m laughing with her. I was hoping I could watch an unhealthy amount of porn to memorize techniques, but it’s almost impossible in a one-bedroom apartment. I can’t even wait for Eric to fall asleep because he stays up all night gaming. I’ve considered maybe watching porn in the morning while he’s knocked out, but even naked bodies can’t wake me up.
I know I’m lucky just to have a cell phone, even though it has the shittiest Internet connection ever, but with a laptop I could sneak into the bathroom for “research.” Instead, we have a big-ass computer in the living room, and Eric is busy online right now building a free website for his video game clan, The Alpha God Kings. Fuck.
I’m doodling on the back of the report card I got yesterday. Students had to return to school to clean out our lockers and sign up for summer school if needed. My grades dropped in the last couple of months because of, well, you-know-what, but I passed everything (even chemistry, which can go in a corner and melt in hydrochloric acid forever). My guidance counselor tried getting me to talk to her about how I should use this summer to get back in a better headspace for senior year. I totally agree, but right now I’m more concerned about tonight than I am about high school.
The apartment feels extra small, my head even smaller, so I go outside to breathe for a second or minute or hour, but no longer than that because I am having sex tonight whether I know how to or not. I spot Brendan heading into a staircase, call his name, and he holds the door open. He got his first blow job at thirteen from this girl Charlene, and he would go on and on about it whenever we played video games. I hated him for achieving something I hadn’t, but he’s actually the kind of person whose ways I should tap into.
“Yo. You got a second?”
“Uh.” We both look down at his hand and he’s carrying weed in a Ziploc bag. Long gone are the days when he was a solitaire whiz. “I actually gotta go handle this.”
I make my way past him before he can close the door. The staircase smells like fresh piss and I see the puddle on the floor; it was probably Skinny-Dave who is very territorial. “You blazing or dealing?”
Brendan checks his watch. “Dealing. Customer is coming in a minute.”
“I’ll be fast. I need to know how to have sex.”
“Let’s hope it’s not fast for your sake.”
“Thanks, asshole. Help me not fuck this up.”
He shakes his pungent weed in my face. “I gotta make some bank, A.”
“And I gotta make my girlfriend happy, B.” I pull out the two condoms I bought from work yesterday and shake them in his face. “Look, just give me some tips or tell me girls don’t really care about their first times or something. I’m freaking out right now that I’m not—I swear to God I will pay Me-Crazy to destroy you if you repeat this—that I’m not going to be good enough.”
Brendan rubs his eyes. “Fuck all that. I boned a bunch of girls just so I could get off and get better.”
“But I would never treat Genevieve like that.” I wouldn’t use any girl like that. Maybe Brendan isn’t the right person to ask after all.
“That’s why you’re a virgin. Go ask Nolan for advice.”
“Nolan, who’s fathered two kids at seventeen? No thanks.”
“Aaron, don’t be some little boy who everyone will think is a punk or fag if you bitch out.”
“I’m not trying to bitch out!”
Brendan’s phone rings. “It’s my customer. You gotta bounce.”
I don’t move. I expect my sort of best friend to step his game up during this big day for me. “I need you to do better than that.”
“What, did your father not give you a sex talk before he kicked it?”
Really crude way of labeling my dad’s suicide, I know. “No, he would always joke that we had HBO. I overheard him telling Eric some stuff one time, though.”
“There you go. Ask your brother.” I’m about to protest when he stops me. “Look, unless you’re about to buy this weed off me, you need to go.” Brendan fake-smiles with a hand out for money. I turn away. “That’s what I thought,” he says. “Man up tonight.”
There’s a list of things I would rather do than have the sex talk with my brother, but dying a virgin isn’t on it.
Eric is playing the latest Halo game—I’ve lost count to which one this is—and his match is finally coming to a close. I have no idea what to say. We sometimes play racing games together, less so these days. We definitely never talk to each other about monumental life things, not even Dad’s death. His match ends and I stop acting like I’m reading Scorpius Hawthorne and the Crypt of Lies and sit up from my bed.
“Do you remember Dad’s sex talk?”