but lying back listening to music or having sex. He’ll never permit that with his kids when they reach that age or even twenty and they’re still living home, and it’s probably more accepted now than then so might even be more accepted ten years from now. Knows it’s more accepted: some parents thinking better the kids do it in your home where you can give them a condom than on a beach or in back of a car without one and where they can get mugged or the girl gang-raped. Door will always have to be open, main lights on and music not so loud to drown out every sound. Eight years from now with Margo it might begin, though he hopes not after what they’ve subtly instilled in her so far and he expects to openly impress on her later on: do young youthful things while you’re young, save the older fake reveling and rebelling stuff for when you’re over twenty-one and have half a brain what’s right in those goings-on, and he’s sure Lee will go along with him on that, though who knows? She might say “I had my first all-the-way when I was sixteen with a boy several years older who I loved so why not her when she’s a year or two older than I was if she truly wants to and is prepared for it and the boy’s nice and they’ve been seeing each other awhile and are genuinely fond of each other and absolutely safe about the act?” On his first date with Lenore, and he can’t really call it that and he never saw her outside her apartment, she answered the door and said “Come in, hello, these are my folks, Martha and Mo” or something, “this is Nat,” as they passed the living room, parents were seated reading the papers and waved, sometimes he went into the living room if they were there to say hello and shake their hands, “Now I want to show you my room,” and they went in and she said “Close the door, it’s okay, they hate me and I hate them, they’re demented old assholes but they’re cool.” “Jeez, what a way to talk about your parents,” and she said “Why, something wrong with it? I live with them, you don’t, but if my talk’s not up to your standards, split,” and he said “No, I don’t mind.” She had her own little refrigerator in her room with sodas and snacks inside, double electric burner for making hot chocolate and mint tea, she said, though she never once offered him anything but a cigarette every time he was there when she knew he didn’t smoke, record player, shortwave radio, TV set when lots of homes didn’t even have one, all sorts of things, even a toaster and table cigarette lighter and a carton of cigarettes on her night table and a typewriter on a desk and two walls of tall bookcases filled with books. She said when he was staring at them “Do you like to read?” and he said “Oh, I love it,” and she said “Good, we got something in common — who are your favorite authors?” and he mentioned a few and she said “They stink — maybe I can loan you some of my books; I got too many,” and he said “Sure, I’ll give them a closer look after,” and she said “After what?” and wasn’t smiling and for a moment he didn’t know what to say because he didn’t want to ruin it and he said “When I’m going, now let’s just talk…where do I sit?” and she said “I guess the bed, there’s no good chair for sitting here,” and they sat together on the bed and talked about people they knew and movies they’ve liked or they want to see and what clothes she thinks boys his age look good in and he said he wouldn’t mind owning some of those but it’d take every dime he earns—“My parents have the money, I suppose, but I want to be independent and I think it’s good,” and she said “I should be more that way too with money but Martha and Mo won’t let me — they give me more things than I need and always leave plenty of money in a kitchen drawer for me for whenever I want it — even enough to buy you a restaurant dinner with me if you’d like to one night,” and he said “Sure, that’d be nice, I’ve hardly ever gone except with my parents for lunch, but I wouldn’t want you to pay and I don’t think I could pay for myself unless it was a kind of cheap place,” and she said “Don’t be silly, it’s an invitation, and I hope you like French food, I do,” and he said “Sure, probably, what do they have?” and she said “Snails, atmosphere, cloth napkins, who cares?” and moved closer and he did and they kissed and did that for a while, kissing, rubbing each other’s backs and necks and he thought this is probably a good time and reached for the night table light, wanted to get it over with and go home and maybe call one of his friends and tell him, and she said “Wait, listen at the door,” and he said “For what?” and she said “Do what I say, tell me if you hear anything, or I’m not turning off the light,” and he got up and put his ear to the door and heard nothing and said “Your parents?” and she said “Lock the door, they can be snoopy even if they are cool — I think they’d like to burst in here sometimes and see me naked, not with boys so much but when I’m undressing for bed or drying after showering — I have my own shower, by the way, with these needlelike side sprays from Sweden if you ever feel like taking one when you’re here,” and he thought “With you? I shouldn’t say,” and said “Thanks, but about your parents barging in here, come on now, they wouldn’t do that,” and she said angrily “You don’t believe me?” and he said “Hey, if you say it, it’s got to be true, but you can still see how someone could find it hard to believe, parents doing that,” and locked the door and got back on the bed and she turned the light off and they kissed and he said “Could you put out your cigarette, please, it’s the smoke, it gets in my nose,” and she said “If you insist, sir, though I hope you’re not going to next complain about my breath; I try to be mindful of others with what I smoke; they’re mentholated,” and he said “No, I don’t mind cigarette smell even if it doesn’t have that,” and they lay, as they always did, on the bed — this probably happened five or six times before he said “Do you think you could put my thing between your boobs and rub and stuff and do it that way?” and she said “Where’d you ever get that idea? You’ve got to be sick, sonny, thinking I’d ever do that to a boy. Better you get the heck out of here and pronto,” and got off the bed and buttoned herself up and shooed him out and told him not to call her anymore, he did and she said “I was serious; leave me alone or I’m calling the police”—and she’d grab his penis through the pants after he touched her breasts through her shirt and then he’d unzip his fly or she would and she’d jerk him up and down and he’d stick his finger in her vagina and poke and probe and wiggle it around inside and they’d go on like that and continue kissing till he’d come into a bunch of tissues she’d quickly pop out of a box by her bed and hand him or cover his penis tip with. She never came but maybe she did. He didn’t think about those things then for girls and didn’t talk about it with her and for all he knew he had probably hurt her with his finger. He just didn’t know what to do in there or around it and he’s not so sure he does now. Several women before Lee tried at times to improve his fingering technique and even Lee now and then says he’s not doing it right or he could be doing it better, though Lenore never complained about it and she was the sort of person who would have or at least said when he hurt. Maybe she didn’t even know what she was supposed to get out of it. Or she had somehow come to believe that a boy scratching deep inside her was about the gentlest and most skillful fingering she should expect to get. But she had to have done it to herself lots of times and there must have been a couple of guys before him who had done it well, so who knows what she thought when he did it. Anyway, the poor parents, he thought in the car before. Lenore was a little homely too. Big nose, nothing that would bother him today, he found ugly then. He didn’t want to be seen outside with her, and she was also a little heavy. His friends would have said, which they did when he told them what they were doing to each other in the room, “Take a peek at Nat with Miss Beak” or “L’Amour Schnoz” or “the blimp.” Maybe her folks thought this was the only way she was going to get a guy. That’s what he thought then. But they didn’t look or seem dumb. Father was a doctor, mother an interior designer and both were always reading something when he went into the living room to say hello or waved when he left: news magazines, books, professional journals, big thick newspapers,