X. SEX QUESTION

Is it a question?

 

I better be getting home.

 

Okay.

 

They continued to sit. They were parked way out on the highway.

 

Cold night smell

 

coming in the windows. New moon floating white as a rib at the edge of the sky.

 

I guess I’m someone who will never be satisfied,

 

said Herakles. Geryon felt all nerves in him move to the surface of his body.

 

What do you mean satisfied?

 

Just—satisfied. I don’t know. From far down the freeway came a sound

 

of fishhooks scraping the bottom of the world.

 

You know. Satisfied. Geryon was thinking hard. Fires twisted through him.

 

He picked his way carefully

 

toward the sex question. Why is it a question? He understood

 

that people need

 

acts of attention from one another, does it really matter which acts?

 

He was fourteen.

 

Sex is a way of getting to know someone,

 

Herakles had said. He was sixteen. Hot unsorted parts of the question

 

were licking up from every crack in Geryon,

 

he beat at them as a nervous laugh escaped him. Herakles looked.

 

Suddenly quiet.

 

It’s okay, said Herakles. His voice washed

 

Geryon open.

 

Tell me, said Geryon and he intended to ask him, Do people who like sex

 

have a question about it too?

 

but the words came out wrong—Is it true you think about sex every day?

 

Herakles’ body stiffened.

 

That isn’t a question it’s an accusation. Something black and heavy dropped

 

between them like a smell of velvet.

 

Herakles switched on the ignition and they jumped forward onto the back of the night.

 

Not touching

 

but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.