Men, Women & Children (10 page)

C
hris Truby sat in his room masturbating and watching a video clip of a girl urinating while a man had anal sex with her. Hannah Clint was on her way to his house in order for them to begin work on their 9/11 project by interviewing his parents, who were in the living room watching a rerun of
Deal or No Deal
. He was about to ejaculate at the moment in the video clip when another man entered the frame and urinated into the girl’s open mouth as the man who was having anal sex with her said, “Drink that piss, you slut.” Chris found a dirty sock on the floor a few feet away, inserted his still-erect penis, and continued masturbating for a few seconds, still watching the girl drink urine while being penetrated anally, until he himself ejaculated into the sock. He found this method of masturbation to be the most economic when his parents were still awake. It required no trip to the bathroom for cleanup. He merely had to remove the sock, which contained all of his semen, hide it under his bed for twenty-four hours, and then deposit it in the family dirty clothes hamper with the rest of his laundry. He would hide his socks in order to give the semen a chance to dry so there would be no chance that his mother might accidentally come across a wet spot in the cloth, smell it to determine what it might be, and then discover that he had been masturbating into his socks.

After buttoning his pants, Chris lay on his bed feeling calm, as he usually did immediately after masturbation. He wondered if Hannah had ever masturbated or watched pornography. He wondered if she would object to him showing her some on his computer after they finished interviewing his parents. He wondered if she still harbored any sexually explicit thoughts or feelings for him, or if they had evaporated. He assumed none of these questions would be answered that night.

The doorbell rang some minutes later and Chris’s father, Don, answered the door to find Hannah, whom he was not expecting. He said, “Hello?”

Hannah said, “Hi, um, is Chris home . . . or?”

Don said, “One second,” and as he turned around, Chris was already making his way toward the front door.

Chris said, “Hey, Dad, uh, I spaced. Forgot to mention—this is Hannah. We’re working on a project for school. Need to interview you and Mom tonight.”

Don looked at Hannah. She was holding a notebook and wearing a tight, low-cut shirt, and he could see that, even at thirteen or fourteen years old, her breasts were larger than his own wife’s; they had the perfect shape of newly formed breasts, before any sagging had set in with age. Don felt some guilt about the envy he felt for his son, but it passed almost immediately. Don said, “Well, Hannah, it’s nice to meet you. Come on in and let’s see what we can do about this interview.”

Don led Hannah and Chris into the living room, where Rachel Truby sat on the couch watching television. Don said, “Honey, this is Hannah. She and our son are working on a project for school and they need to interview us. You up for it?”

Rachel was tired, and her thoughts had been concentrated on Secretluvur, and the possibility of excitement that he represented, and the fact that to experience that excitement she would have to cheat on her husband. She was glad to have something to take her mind off it, at least for a few minutes. She said, “Sure. What are we being interviewed about?”

Chris said, “9/11.”

Don said, “Jesus. They’re having you do a project on 9/11? That’s some pretty serious stuff.”

Rachel said, “I think it’s good. You guys probably don’t even remember it, do you?”

Chris said, “Not really.”

Hannah said, “I’m pretty sure we were too young.”

Rachel said, “Well, let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make us some drinks and you guys can ask us whatever you want.”

Once in the kitchen, Hannah took out her notebook and opened it to a blank page. Chris said, “Are you going to write this down? We can just voice-memo it.”

Hannah said, “I guess we should do both, maybe.”

Chris said, “Cool,” took out his phone, opened a voice-memo application, hit the record button, and set it down on the table in front of his mother and father. Don looked at his wife and wondered if it was possible that this act of family bonding, which had been rare in recent months, would curry him any favor with her later that night, and invite some sort of sexual interaction. He hoped it would.

Chris began, “So I guess, um, what was it like on 9/11?”

Don said, “Go ahead, honey,” and put his hand on her arm, using the opportunity to initiate some form of physical intimacy that he hoped he could escalate to a sexual advance later in the night.

Rachel said, “Well, I guess it was scary for everyone. I think we all felt pretty safe, I mean as a country, up until that point, and then none of us did. It was just really, really scary. I don’t know how else to put it.”

Hannah said, “Um, how did you, like, find out that it was happening and everything? Did you get a text or . . .”

Don said, “A text? No. Text messages weren’t really a thing back then. We didn’t even have cell phones yet, did we, honey?”

Rachel shook her head and said, “No. We didn’t get them until that year for Christmas, actually. And we got them because we thought if anything like 9/11 ever happened again we should be able to get ahold of each other as fast as possible.”

Don said, “Yeah, we actually found out about it from a regular phone call—like a landline phone call. My brother, who lived in New York at the time, called us up and just said, ‘Turn on the TV. We’re under attack.’ And then he hung up. He’s a weird guy and plays jokes and things from time to time, but I could tell from his voice that something was seriously going on, so I turned on the TV about one minute before the second plane hit and we, Chris’s mom and I, both sat there watching it.”

Chris said, “Where was I during all of this?”

Rachel said, “You were asleep in your room. We didn’t know if we should wake you up or what we should do. I mean, you were so young, you wouldn’t have understood what was going on or anything.”

Chris said, “What were you guys doing when your brother called—like, actually doing?”

Don knew exactly what they were doing: They were having sex. It was at a time in their relationship when morning sex before work was common and they both enjoyed it. It was difficult to have sex at night because Chris was young and didn’t sleep well through the night, but he slept in the mornings and this gave them a daily sexual opportunity. Don remembered the entire encounter. Rachel woke him up by slowly stroking his penis into an erection and then began to fellate him. He reached down and pulled on one of her legs, which had become his standard means of indicating that he wanted his wife to position her vagina over his face to engage in mutual oral sex. They did this for the next few minutes and then Rachel moved down and slid Don’s penis into her vagina while she sat facing away on top of him. It was one of Don’s favorite positions, because he enjoyed the way Rachel’s buttocks looked as he spread them apart with his hands to get a better view of his penis sliding into her. He remembered how her body used to look, how she used to enjoy sex. It seemed to him that she had become a different person and his desire to have sex with her now had nothing to do with her, it was just a base desire that all men had to put their penis into things, and his wife was just that—a thing. A person he used to know and used to be attracted to, but now just a thing, the closest thing to him in physical proximity that had places for him to put his penis. Don felt pathetic, but was made to feel even more pathetic as he thought about the fact that this thing in which he wanted to put his penis wouldn’t even allow it with any acceptable frequency. He thought briefly about telling his son and this girl he’d just met the truth, that he was having sex with his wife when the world was ending—just how it should have been—but he knew that that would end any chance of having sex with her that night. So he let Rachel field the question.

Don said, “Honey, you want to take this one?”

Some small part of Don thought that maybe his wife would tell the truth, but she said, “We were getting ready for work, you know, mind on a million other things. Definitely not thinking that our country was going to be attacked. And then we got that call and turned on the TV and just sat there all day. We didn’t even go to work, just watched the news all day and tried to make sense of it.”

Chris said, “Did you guys know anyone who was in it—like, actually in the buildings or anything?”

Don said, “No, like we said, your uncle Cliff was in New York at the time but he wasn’t anywhere near the Twin Towers. That’s probably the closest we were to having someone we actually knew in it. Didn’t make it any less scary, though.”

Hannah said, “I read online that there were a lot of candlelight vigils and group prayer gatherings and stuff. Did you guys do any of that?”

Rachel said, “No. We just stayed home and watched TV, mostly. I honestly just felt like somebody knocked the wind out of me. I didn’t want to do anything except sit and watch TV.”

Hannah said, “Um . . . what was the biggest news story that was happening right before 9/11?”

Rachel said, “I don’t know. I can remember there was this interview that Anne Heche did where she said she talked to aliens in an alien language and everyone was saying her career was over because she was crazy and then 9/11 happened.”

Chris said, “Who’s Anne Heche?”

Don said, “She’s an actress. Was dating Ellen DeGeneres for a while.”

Hannah said, “What else? Um . . . did you guys support the war in Iraq and everything?”

Don said, “Well, yeah. I think everybody pretty much did. I mean, we didn’t know at the time that there weren’t going to be any weapons of mass destruction and that the whole thing was a big ploy to get more money for Bush and his oil buddies. We were just pissed off that we got attacked and the Bush administration did a real good job of making us all think that Iraq was behind it when in reality they had nothing to do with it.”

Chris said, “How about, do you think there will be another attack in our lifetimes?”

Rachel said, “I have no idea. I hope not, but it seems pretty impossible to stop people who are willing to kill themselves in the process of killing you, you know? I mean, if another terrorist really wants to walk into Westfield Mall with dynamite strapped to his chest and blow himself up, how can we stop him? We can’t, really. I guess we just have to hope that maybe the one good thing Obama might be able to do is make the world see us a little differently, and then maybe the terrorists won’t want to do those things anymore.”

Chris said, “You got anything else, Hannah?”

Hannah said, “No, I’m pretty sure we got enough. Thank you so much, Mr. and Mrs. Truby.”

Don said, “No problem. I hope we helped you guys enough to get an A.”

Chris said, “I think it’s one of those deals where everybody is going to get an A as long as they turn something in.”

Don said, “Oh, well, then I hope you learned something,” and then he laughed.

Chris said, “Do you want to go type some of this stuff out and start putting together our presentation?”

Hannah said, “Sure.”

Chris said, “Peace out.”

Hannah said, “Thank you guys again so much for helping us out. And it was really nice meeting you.” Then she and Chris went back to his room, leaving Don and Rachel alone. Don stood up from his chair, moved behind Rachel, and started rubbing her shoulders. He said, “It’s weird how long ago all of that seems, isn’t it?”

Rachel didn’t want him to touch her, but she felt guilty somehow about letting this fact be known, so she continued to allow him to rub her shoulders, her guilt tied in some way to the fact that they’d just recalled a moment of mutual trauma in their lives. She wished she could ignore the fact that it was her husband long enough to enjoy it. She said, “Yeah. It’s weird that enough time has passed that they have our kids doing school projects about it.”

Don said, “I know,” and he leaned down to kiss his wife. Her guilt held her in place. She accepted his kiss and even kissed him back. Don’s surprise was too extreme to be hidden. He backed away from her, looked at her, and said, “I love you.” Rachel wasn’t sure whether she still loved her husband or not. She knew she wasn’t attracted to him in any way, but they had built a life together. He wasn’t a bad husband or a bad father. They were still friends on some level. She said, “I love you, too.”

He took her by the hand and said, “Let’s go.” She allowed him to take her into their bedroom, still thinking about that morning of 9/11 when they were having sex, when there was no question in her mind that she loved her husband. She wondered if she would ever feel that way again. She thought about the years that had passed since then and about Don. She knew he hadn’t done anything to deserve the treatment he was getting from her. With that thought in her mind, she turned off the light in their bedroom, took off her clothes, and had sex with Don.

In an effort to give him what she knew he wanted that night, she didn’t just lie still and allow him to grind his penis into her without reaction. She got on top of him, turned around so she was facing away from him, and rode him in the position she knew he enjoyed the most. She tried not to, but couldn’t stop herself from imagining Secretluvur’s penis in her vagina instead of Don’s. She found this to be beyond absurd, based on the fact that she didn’t even know what Secretluvur looked like—which made it clear to her, in that moment, that she at least had to meet him.