He looks at me. “There was a scare once, in high school, but it was a false alarm. Since then I learned my lesson. I always use condoms, unlike these assholes.” He points to the TV. “Sometimes I think I should go ahead and get snipped, like Pete and Repeat.”
“Like Pete. Repeat’s a girl, so she got her ovaries out or something.”
“Okay, like Pete.”
“Don’t you want kids? One day?”
“I know I’m supposed to. But when I picture my future, I don’t see it.”
“Live fast, die young.” Everyone romanticizes that notion, and I hate it. I saw a picture of Meg’s body from the police report. There is absolutely nothing romantic about dying young.
“No, it’s not like I see myself dead or anything. It’s just I don’t see myself . . . connected.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “You seem pretty connected.” I gesture to his cell phone.
“I guess.”
“You guess? Let me guess. Did you have a girl over last night?”
His ears go a little pink, which answers the question.
“And will you have a girl over tonight?”
“That depends . . .” he begins.
“On what?”
“If you decide to stay over.”
“What the hell, Ben? Are you, like, some kind of addict? Can you not help yourself?”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Chill, Cody. I meant if you crashed on the couch or something, you’d stay over.”
“Ben, I will clarify this for you so there are no misunderstandings: I will never sleep with you, or in the vicinity of you.”
“I’ll cross you off the list.”
“A long list, I imagine.”
He has the good grace to look embarrassed by this.
We watch the TV for a while longer.
“Can I ask you something else?”.
“If I say no, will that stop you?” he answers.
“Why do you do this? I mean, I get why guys want to have sex. I get that guys are all horny all the time. But why a different girl every night?”
“It’s not a different girl every night.”
“Near enough, I’m guessing.”
Ben pulls out a pack of cigarettes, toys with an unlit one. I can see he wants to light up, but I don’t think smoking’s allowed in the house. After a while he puts the cigarette back in the pack. “You know what you know,” he says.
“What’s that’s mean?”
“It just . . . becoming a man, it’s not like it’s something that happens instinctively. . . .” He trails off.
“Oh, please. I’ve never met my father and my mother is hardly a role model, and I don’t blame my shit on them. So what’s your story, you didn’t have a father, Ben? Cry me a river.”
He looks at me, his face gone hard, the Ben from the stage, the Ben from Meg’s room that first time. “Oh, I had a father,” he says. “Who do you think I learned it from?”