Men, Women & Children: A Novel

by Chad Kultgen

  A few blocks away, Carl Benton was uneasy about his daughter spending so much time with her boyfriend, Danny Vance. Carl was aware that his daughter had inherited much of her physical appearance from her mother, which meant that she would likely be the first sexual fantasy of many of the boys she went to school with. And more than a fantasy, she would likely be Danny Vance’s first sexual experience. Carl did not like this. As he ate dinner with his wife, Sarah, and his seven-year-old son, Andrew, he said, “She spends a lot of time over there. Should we be as okay with this as we’re acting like we are?”

  Sarah didn’t mind Brooke spending time at the Vances’ house. She and Carl had known the Vances for several years, and their son, Danny, was among the less threatening boys of his age. Brooke had never cried as a result of anything he had done, which, as a junior high school teacher for many years before she retired, Sarah knew to be rare. She said, “I think we should be more than okay with it. She’s having fun—let her be.”

  Andrew said, “Can I go eat dinner with the Vances?”

  Carl said, “Very funny, turd.”

  After they finished dinner, Carl helped Andrew with his homework and then put him to bed. Then he went into his own bedroom to find Sarah reading a book he had never heard of. He said, “Honey, you’re really not worried about Brooke and Danny?”

  Sarah continued reading as she spoke. She said, “No. I’m really not.”

  Carl said, “She’s getting older, you know what I mean?”

  Sarah said, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. If you’re afraid she’s going to start having sex, then talk to her about it.”

  Carl said, “That’s not a father-daughter conversation. That’s a mother-daughter conversation.”

  Sarah said, “We’ve already talked to both of them about sex. She knows better than to do something stupid.”

  Carl said, “Yeah, but we talked to them when she was still a kid. She’s not anymore. Have you looked at her lately? Boys are going to be beating down our door pretty soon.”

  Sarah said, “Then we should be happy that she has a nice boy like Danny Vance to keep them away. She’ll be fine.”

  Sarah put her book down on the nightstand and turned off her reading lamp. Carl went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. When he came back, Sarah was asleep.

  A few blocks away, and a few hours earlier, Jim Vance opened the door and came in with Danny and Brooke. Danny’s mother, Tracey, had already set the table. She said, “Hello, Brooke. It’s so nice to have you joining us for dinner tonight.”

  Brooke said, “Thanks, Mrs. Vance. It’s nice of you to have me over.”

  Tracey said, “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s Tracey.”

  Brooke said, “Sorry.”

  Tracey said, “It’s all right. Dinner’ll be ready in about ten minutes. You kids can go watch TV if you want.”

  Danny led Brooke into the living room. Tracey turned to Jim and said, “She is such a cutie.”

  Jim said, “Just like you used to be.”

  Tracey said, “Used to be?” and then spanked Jim, who laughed and kissed his wife before going into the kitchen for a Beck’s.

  Once dinner was ready, all four of them took their seats around the table and Jim said, “So, how’s the team looking this year?”

  Danny said, “Well, Tim Mooney quit today, so it’s going to be a lot tougher to win without him, but I think we’ll be okay. Coach Quinn is going to let me pass a lot this season and Chris should be able to get down the field, so I think we’ll have a shot at district.”

  Jim said, “Tim Mooney quit?”

  Danny said, “Yeah.”

  Jim said, “Why?”

  Danny said, “Coach didn’t say.”

  Tracey said, “That’s so sad. I bet he’s going through a tough time with his mom being gone and everything.”

  Danny said, “Whatever.”

  Tracey said, “Well, Brooke, how are you doing this year?”

  Brooke said, “Pretty good. We’re just getting ready for the season to start, too. It’s pretty exciting. I can’t wait to see Danny play. I know they’re going to be awesome.”

  The rest of the dinner conversation was about the various junior high schools Danny would face in the regular season and about American Idol, with Tracey adding some anecdotes about the neighbor’s cat, who seemed to be defecating on the Vance’s front steps with almost daily regularity. After dinner, Brooke helped Tracey clear the table. Tracey said, “Brooke, would you like a ride home? Jim can take you.”

  Danny said, “Oh, we were going to play some Rock Band and then I was just going to walk her home, if that’s cool.”

  Tracey said, “As long as your mom is fine with you kids walking out after dark, Brooke.”

  Brooke said, “Yeah, she’s cool with it. I mean, we’re only like five minutes away.”

  Danny and Brooke went up the stairs to his room.

  Jim said, “You don’t think they’re . . . having sex, do you?”

  Tracey said, “I doubt it. But maybe you should have ‘the talk’ with him.”

  Jim said, “Jesus Christ, really? How old were we when we started getting it on?”

  Tracey said, “We were in college, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to wait that long. Better safe than sorry. Maybe you should buy him some condoms.”

  Jim said, “Oh my god, are you serious? Don’t they just learn everything about sex from TV and the Internet? Do I really have to do this?”

  Tracey said, “Don’t be stupid.” She kissed him and added, “Just have the talk with him.”

  Jim took a swig from the Beck’s he was currently drinking and said, “I don’t see why I have to do it.”

  Tracey said, “I did it with our daughter and you have to do it with our son. That was the deal.”

  Jim said, “I know, I know. I’ll do it this weekend. I don’t want to get in his head before their first game.”

  Upstairs, Danny turned on his Xbox 360 and raised the volume on his television so his parents could hear nothing but the sounds of the Rock Band introductory video coming from his room. Then he sat down on his bed next to Brooke and kissed her. They had been in the habit of pretending to play Rock Band or do homework with loud music playing for almost a month while they engaged in various forms of foreplay, never removing clothing, but getting slightly more aggressive with the placement of their hands in each successive encounter. Danny had felt Brooke’s small and still-forming breasts through her shirt; Brooke had felt Danny’s erection through his pants as it pressed against her legs and genitals. Danny had ejaculated in his pants as a result of these encounters once before. Embarrassed, he said nothing about it and pretended that the event never occurred. Although it was strangely arousing to Brooke, she remained silent about the incident as well, assuming that Danny’s silence indicated his unwillingness to address the matter.

  As Danny retraced every step he had taken in their most recent groping session, kissing Brooke’s neck, moving his hand from her hip toward her breast, tonguing her ear, and eventually moving his hand to her left breast, he knew that the only possible next step, the only way to keep the evolution of their physical relationship steady, was to put his hand under her shirt. He moved his hand off Brooke’s breast, back down toward the bottom of her shirt, and slid his fingertips just under it, barely grazing her stomach. She moaned.

  Danny hoped that Brooke would be unable to detect his nervousness as he slid his hand slightly higher, placing his full palm on her stomach, his fingertips brushing the bottom of her bra. He stopped his hand here for a moment and rubbed her stomach, not sure if this brazen action would constitute enough progress for one night in Brooke’s mind.

  Although Brooke was enjoying herself, it was difficult for her not to think about the image on Hannah’s phone of her performing fellatio on a random and unnamed boy. She had no choice but to compare herself to Hannah, and when she did, she felt inferior. As Danny rubbed his hand against her stomach, she made th
e decision that Hannah wasn’t going to be the only one to have had a boy’s penis in her mouth in the eighth grade. And, beyond that, she rationalized that Hannah didn’t love the boy she shared her first sexual encounter with, so Brooke could still be the first girl in eighth grade to perform fellatio in a loving relationship and that was more important than just being the first to do it.

  She moved Danny’s hand out from under her shirt. Danny said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go too fast or anything.”

  Brooke said, “You didn’t,” and then rolled over on top of him and kissed him. She kissed him down the neck and lifted up his shirt, at the same time moving down and kissing his chest and stomach while rubbing his erection through his pants.

  Danny could feel himself on the verge of ejaculating again. He said, “What are you doing?”

  Brooke said, “Something.”

  Danny said, “We don’t have to do this. Are you sure we’re, you know, like ready for this and everything?” He was nervous and unsure about how to behave in such a situation. Although he and Brooke had been engaging in increasingly more sexual behavior over the past few months, he had come to the conclusion that he wasn’t ready for anything beyond what they had been doing. He hoped that Brooke felt the same way.

  She said, “I know we don’t have to, but in my opinion it’s fine if we do. We’ve been together for a long time. We should.” Brooke perceived Danny’s hesitation to be some kind of obligatory and unnecessary chivalry on his part. She certainly didn’t want to have sex, but she had convinced herself that performing oral sex on her boyfriend of over a year wasn’t, in actuality, as significant as it might seem. Furthermore, she reasoned that she’d rather have her first attempt be on a person she loved than on a stranger, as Hannah had done. She said, “Just relax.”

  She noticed the smell immediately. She found it vaguely unpleasant and wondered if Danny had taken a shower after football practice. She knew that he sometimes didn’t if the practice was light. She took his penis into her mouth, careful not to graze it with her teeth. The instructions for performing oral sex she had read in various magazines and on websites all mentioned a man’s distaste for having teeth be involved in any way.

  Danny had run through every nonsexual thought his mind could conjure during the experience in an effort to avoid immediate ejaculation—algebra equations, football plays, Grand Theft Auto cheat codes, the image of his grandmother urinating in her pants at the last family Christmas—but he reached a point at which he could no longer hold back. He had no idea what the proper etiquette was to let Brooke know what was about to happen. All he could do was tap her shoulder three times in rapid succession, which only served to confuse her enough to remove his penis from her mouth slightly just as he ejaculated. She first felt his semen hit her on the upper lip and go slightly up one nostril; the second contraction of Danny’s prostate expelled semen onto Brooke’s cheek, which caused her to recoil. The final contractions of Danny’s prostate resulted in semen being deposited all over his Old Navy boxer shorts and Goodrich Olympians T-shirt.

  They were silent for a few seconds, Danny looking directly at his ceiling, not wanting to make eye contact with Brooke, feeling slightly embarrassed. Brooke, too, felt some embarrassment at not being able to contain the semen better. She had heard that guys prefer a girl who swallows the ejaculate. The smell of it was slightly disgusting to her, though, and the taste, she imagined, was even worse. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever be able to swallow semen. She tried wiping the semen off her face with her hand, but its texture made it difficult to manage. She said, “Um, I think I need a towel or something.”

  Danny said, “Okay, hang on,” and got up off his bed, still without making eye contact with her. He went into the upstairs bathroom and found a hand towel. He used it on himself first, cleaning up as much of the semen as he could, hoping that his mother wouldn’t find it on his clothes when she washed them the next day. Then he went back into his room and handed the towel to Brooke, who eventually managed to clean herself up satisfactorily, despite getting some of the semen Danny put on the towel on her face and hands a few times.

  Brooke said, “Did you like that? I mean, did I do it okay?”

  Danny said, “Um, yeah.”

  Brooke said, “Was there anything I could have, like, done better?”

  Danny said, “Um, I don’t think so.”

  Brooke said, “Okay, cool.”

  Danny said, “Yeah.”

  Brooke said, “Well, in my opinion, I’m glad we did it, aren’t you?”

  Danny said, “Yeah.”

  The truth was that neither of them was glad. Danny felt strange upon the act’s completion, as did Brooke. They had crossed some line, performed some act that signified their emergence into an adult world. Whatever innocence they once had was, although not completely gone, tarnished in some way, and they both recognized this.

  Danny knew immediately that he didn’t want to do this again anytime soon. And, more than repeating this act, he feared that the escalation of their physical relationship would now culminate in sexual intercourse, something he felt unsure about and unready for. He wondered if he could do anything to stave off this eventuality until he felt more ready. His thoughts drifted to ideas of breaking up with Brooke. It might be his only option.

  Brooke, too, regretted doing what she’d done. Her sense of competition had driven her to perform the act, and she took some solace in feeling that she was on equal ground with Hannah Clint, but she assumed that Danny would now expect at least that level of physical intimacy at every subsequent encounter. Brooke knew she wouldn’t be able to meet his expectation, let alone exceed it with sexual intercourse, which is what she logically assumed he would require in the near future. She, too, began contemplating a breakup.

  Danny and Brooke walked downstairs past Danny’s parents, who were watching Dancing with the Stars at Tracey’s behest, and out the front door, any evidence of their sexual activity unnoticed. When they came to Brooke’s house, she leaned in to kiss Danny on the lips, their standard parting display of affection, but Danny said, “Is it cool if we just hug? You just had my, you know, like in your mouth.”

  Brooke said, “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  They hugged. Brooke went inside to find that everyone else was already asleep. She was relieved to be able to avoid the strange conversation with her mother or father that she had assumed would happen—the conversation in which she would have to lie about the details of the night and hope that her mother or father wouldn’t notice any evidence of the night’s actual activities. She made her way upstairs where she washed her face properly, finding a few tiny bits of Danny’s semen in the hair above her right ear, then got into bed and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, trying to overcome the strange nausea she had felt since performing fellatio on Danny. She reached for her cell phone and sent Danny a text message that read, “luv u.”

  Though content that night as he went back home and lay in his bed, Danny was also trying to overcome a certain nausea, one that came from an all-consuming uncertainty he felt about his future with Brooke and what impact a breakup might have on his eighth-grade year. He briefly thought about having to perform oral sex on Brooke in order to placate her at their next physical encounter. He realized he would have absolutely no idea how to perform even the most rudimentary version of the act. He decided he wouldn’t make the attempt unless she asked. He replied to her text with one that read, “u 2.”

  chapter

  five

  Brooke Benton and Allison Doss each held one side of a twenty-by-six-foot butcher-paper banner that read, “Olympian Strength, Win! Win! Win!” stretching it tight as they stood near the end zone closest to the Goodrich Olympians’ field house. Hannah Clint, along with the other Olympiannes, stood nearby facing the home crowd doing various cheers, kicks, and claps. Hannah’s mother, Dawn, was on the field taking photographs of the girls. She had convinced Principal Ligorski and Mrs. Langston, the Olympiannes’ coach,
to let her serve as the photographer and organizer of the Olympianne scrapbook that year, agreeing to perform these services at no cost, thereby saving the school the seven hundred dollars that was normally charged by the local photographer. Dawn saw it as an opportunity to get some impressive action shots for her daughter’s website that would be impossible to get otherwise.

  In the stands, Don Truby, Jim Vance, and Kent Mooney stood next to each other. Don passed a flask of bourbon to Jim, who declined the offer, prompting Don to pass it to Kent, who drank generously and said, “Thanks. Needed that more than you know.”

  Don said, “Work getting shitty?”

  Kent said, “Nah, no more shitty than usual. Just Lydia being gone and Tim not playing tonight, you know?”

  Don said, “Yeah, Chris mentioned Tim quitting. Sorry about that, man. But on the bright side—and I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear right now—but with the wife thing, you’re better off, man. Seriously. You’re a free man. You can bang any chick you want.”

  Kent said, “I haven’t really been in a bangin’ mood lately, Don.”

  Don said, “I’m just saying, Rachel lets me bang her maybe once a month. I’m stuck with her, man. That’s what married guys have to deal with until we fucking die.”

  Jim Vance said, “Speak for yourself.”

  Don said, “Oh, Mister ‘My kid’s the fucking quarterback and I fuck my wife three times a day’ over here. Fucking bullshit.”

  Jim said, “It’s not bullshit. Tracey and I still have sex at least a few times a week. So not all married guys are in your situation, Don.”

  Don said, “Fuck. Twice a week?”