Luke and Ellen

Luke’s mother caught him making love to the vacuum cleaner. She was shocked into silence. It was a perfect time for a father-son talk, if only her husband was still around.

Luke had sexual relations with grapefruit. His mother looked in the refrigerator, wondering where all the grapefruit were, then looked in the trash, wondering how all her grapefruit ended up there, cored and deformed. She never asked Luke, not wanting to do more parenting than was required.

A board on the fence in the side yard had a knothole in it that was just the right size. The neighbor saw Luke’s part popping through and beat it with a broom. Luke’s friends were going through the same phase, cursed with rivers of hormones and phones full of porn.

Luke took Ellen to a movie. Afterward, she invited him in to watch TV in the family room, while her father sat down the hall in the living room, pretending not to listen in. Ellen turned up the volume, dimmed the lamp, and coerced a kiss out of Luke. He didn’t know how to kiss, whether it should be open-mouthed or closed, tongue or no tongue. Ellen knew how, having discussed it at length with her friends while watching Titanic and The Notebook. Ellen’s father cleared his throat in the other room, a clear signal that it was time for Luke to leave.

Luke couldn’t wait to get home to make love to jar of jam or peanut butter, but instead climaxed prematurely in his pants while braking and going over a speed bump. When he got home, he said a quick “Hi, mom” as he sped from the foyer to his bedroom to change.

Ellen sat with her father at their dining room table, telling her father how careful she was being, promising to take it slow. Her father explained to her that physical love is much better when you wait. He wanted to give her the birth-control talk and abortion warning, but he wasn’t ready. He wished her mother was still around for these awkward talks.

Ellen sat in bed, texting all of her friends about her first date with Luke. It was scary and awesome, warm and sweaty. When she got off the phone, she brushed her teeth, washed her face and took a long, slow look in the mirror. Then she grabbed her electric toothbrush and went to bed.