Page 7 of The Wickedness of Man

“If I ever stop, you know what they’ve said they’ll do.”

“But…” Katie hesitated. “What were you planning on doing about… y’know…afterthe anniversary? Those awful appointments they make you go to?”

I shook my head. “I changed all my paperwork to the new insurance. I thought… I thought I could finally have some privacy. As long as I kept going, but they couldn’t get any details, then…”

“Then maybe you could actually have a normal sex life without freaking out?”

“My father knew,” I said softly, looking down at the couch. “He asked me why I’d canceled it. I told him I’d moved it.”

“Fuck, dude,” said Katie. “They already found out?! There must be like, I don’t know, a spy in the office or something.”

I didn’t answer. I’d moved the appointment to the following month to make sure I would have time for my insurance to kick in, just so I could get my parents outof my reproductive organs for the first time in my life. It was because mine and Danny’s one-year anniversary was coming up, and I’d intended it to be special; to bethenight. Danny had been practically dancing around all day, waiting until after dinner—when we had both gotten naked in our hotel—and he’d encouraged me to have a few drinks to relax. Danny’s version of “a few drinks” was about the same as his sister’s though, and I’d been through most of a bottle of wine when he’d laid on top of me and started kissing me all over.

At first, the sensation had been like being weightless; his mouth felt good; his breath was sweet from the wine; I could feel his desire, and the erection against my stomach made me go positively buzzy. I wanted him to make love to me. I wanted to get my virginity over with and join that strange, seemingly exclusive club everyone else had already joined. But then he’d moved my legs apart, and everything within me clenched sohard, I’d broken out into a sweat and I had to shove him away as I puked on the bed.

I ended up locking myself in the bathroom for an hour before I felt well enough to come back out, and by then, the hotel maids had erased all evidence of my terror and given us fresh linens, but Danny was gone. It had been embarrassing—no,humiliating. After a year… with the man I knew better than any other man in the world…

If I wasn’t able to have sex with him, then maybe it wasn’t possible for me at all. Danny had come back before check-out the next morning. He told me he thought we should take a break, and I’d packed my bags and left him at the front desk, then went home on my own. My birthday party had been the first time I’d seen him since. I thought that maybe he wanted to discuss trying again.

“Hey,” I asked, “did Danny really pick out that present for me?”

Katie’s mouth went into a tight line, which I recognized as the signal she was trying to think up a decent lie. She blew out a breath of air.

“I mean… he paid for it?” she said, squinching her face up. “It was on your public wish list. I… I asked him if he thought you’d like it, and he said you’d been looking at it for months, so I got it and wrapped it—but hedidpay me back.”

I just nodded.

“I’m sorry, I can see how that might have been… misleading,” Katie continued, “but Iswear,I didn’t think he was going to break up with you… definitely not like that, the ass.” She sucked her teeth in annoyance. “He could have at least told me. He tells me everything else, for fuck’s sake.”

I didn’t reply. Both Danny and Katie knew my parents had spent nearly every day for as long as I could remember warning me of the lure and evil of carnal desires and giving into the flesh,but there were some things they’d done to me that I was too ashamed to admit. Even to my best friend and boyfriend. Well… ex-boyfriend.

Katie and Danny’s mom had been the one to teach me, in secret, about reproduction and the human anatomy after I got my period the first time. It had been the summer I’d turned twelve—shortly after the purity debacle—and as both of my parents were working at the Christian seminary across town, I was home alone. I’d run to the O’Learys’ in tears, convinced I was dying, and worse—that if my parents saw blood in my underwear, they would think I’d done something sinful and would damn my eternal soul to whatever circle of Hell harlots ended up in.

After that, Mrs. O’Leary made Katie pack tampons and pads for me every month to give to me at school. I would hide them in my locker, only bringing enough with me in my backpack to last for the evening or weekend, and then I would cart the used items wrapped up in toilet tissue and a grocery bag back with me to school to throw them out. My parents never once asked, even when my face began breaking out in pimples and my mother was forced to take me bra shopping. She left me with the attendant, a kind older woman, who helped me figure out my size and how to get everything on and off again.

“It’s so embarrassing,” I admitted finally, sniffling as I desperately tried to hold back further tears. “I’mtwenty-sixand I had a panic attack the moment Danny—sorry, I know it’s your brother, so, ah, maybe you’re not the person to discuss this with.”

Katie pursed her lips. “If we could just keep it to generalities, that would be helpful.”

I laughed, wiping my eyes and nose with my sleeve. It was hard to discuss your sex life with your best friend—nonexistentor otherwise—when it was her brother you were trying to have said sex life with.

“Listen,” Katie said, swallowing down her coffee in a big gulp, grimacing briefly. “I know it was your party, and you cantotallycry if you want to, but this is no way to end a birthday. However, given that we are on the topic of sex and gifts, I think it might be helpful to tell you what I got you.”

I nodded, already deciding that I didn’t want to discuss things any further. It was really Danny that I should have been talking to about this, but I couldn’t face him again… not after earlier. Honestly, I didn’t know that Katie’s gift could possibly top hearing Concepción cuss Danny out in three different languages, so when Katie hurried from the room and came back with a pamphlet in her grasp, I was a bit confused.

I looked down at the paper. There was a lovely picture of two pairs of hands on the front, clasped together over some deep purple satin sheets, with the wordsIntimates, Inc.in thin red scrawl across the top.

“What is this…?” I asked. “Is this aboutsex?”

“It’s kind of unusual,” she admitted sheepishly, “but I met this woman in the café?—”

“Wait, what?!” I demanded, looking up at her in agony. “You told some random stranger about my… my…”

“Not the details,” Katie added quickly. “She just knows that you have some ah, hang ups, about sex because your parents were super zealous, and you need someone to talk to.”

That wasn’tsobad, I decided. I flipped open the first fold of the pamphlet.

“’Intimates Inc., relationship and sex counseling, andguided physical intimacy sessions? Let us care for you, mind and body,’” I read aloud, then blinked up at Katie. “Seriously? You wanted your brother and I to go to a therapist who assists people while they have sex?”

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