Lauren Duke carries a laundry basket with fresh, clean articles inside.  She works her way down the second floor hallway, first stopping at the linen closet near the bathroom.  As expected, she removes a few towels and wash clothes from the basket and puts them away.  Next, she makes her way to the master bedroom and disappears inside for a minute or so.

Exiting her and her husband's bedroom, and resumes down the hallway with just a few articles left.  Three doors down, she opens the door and stops in her tracks.  Lauren lingered for just a second and backed out of the room, quietly closing it behind her.

With her back to the door, she sets the laundry basket down and continues down the hallway, making her toward the steps.  She hurries downstairs and through the family room, passing Berta on her way through.  Lauren doesn’t stop until she enters the attached garage.  Inside the garage, Thaddeus lays on a creeper seat beneath Lauren’s Jeep Wrangler.  Saying nothing at the moment, Lauren searches through the cabinets along the wall until she finds what she’s looking for.

---

”Hey,” I called out to Lauren from beneath her Jeep.  ”We probably need to get this thing into the dealership.  I think the transmission is leaking.”

”What!?  Why?  It barely even has ten thousand miles on it,” she replied.

”Well,” I said as I continued to ratchet in the oil pan drain plug.  ”It’s definitely leaking.”

”Yeah well, we have bigger issues,” she said as she leaned against my Monte Carlo.

”Like what?” I asked.  Instead of verbally responding, she tosses a brand new doorknob right into my crotch.  ”OOOF!” I yelped while grabbing my brand new injury.

”Did that hurt?” she asked.

”Li’l bit, yeah,” I confirmed.

”Good,” she replied.

Sliding from beneath her Jeep, I looked up at her.  ”What the hell did I do?”

”Nothing,” she replied.  ”You’re a man and men are gross right now.”

”Huuuuh?” I questioned with an obviously perplexed look on my face.

”You need to change Frankie’s doorknob,” she stated as she began to head back inside.

”Why?  Did he break it?” I asked.

”No,” she stopped on the step before entering the house.  ”I was putting laundry away and I went into his room.  I did not put his clothes away, Leander!  I backed out of his room and came straight here.”

”Okay, why?”

”Thaddeus,” she began.  ”What were you doing at 13 when you were in your room alone?”

Thinking about it for a minute, I didn’t want to acknowledge she might be right.  Last year, I caught him watching porn on his laptop.  I made the wrong call by allowing him to continue with restrictions.  Though I did correct that later and put a block on anything porn related.  Not even on his phone through the wifi could he access it.

Climbing to my feet, I set the packaged doorknob on the fender of her Jeep.  ”You don’t know that’s what he was doing,” I protested.

”Oh yes, I know exactly what he was doing, Leander,” she stated.  ”He didn’t hear me, he didn’t see me and he was NOT covered up.”

”Awww maaaaaan,” I whined.  ”But I just wanted to do guy stuff todayyyy.”

”Mission accomplished,” she replied quickly.  ”There’s literally nothing that’s more ‘guy stuff’ than jerking off.”

”I really hate it when you make good points,” I said facetiously.

”And he’s dating now,” she reminded me.  ”Against my protests.”

”I don’t like him growin’ up any more than you do,” I protested her tone.

”I mean what usually comes after masturbating?”

”Is that a trick question?” I asked and she looked at me with a confused look.  ”The person comes after masturbating.”

”I meant chronologically, dickhead,” she corrected me.

”Ohhh… no, it’s way too early for that.”

”Is it?” she asked as she stepped back down into the garage and approached me.  ”How old were you?”

”Fifteen,” I replied.  ”But he’s smarter than me.”

”How smart is anyone when they’re horny?” she asked.  ”He’s thirteen two weeks from today, Baby.  15 isn’t that far away.”

”Do I really have to do this?” I asked as she wrapped her arms around me and leaned her head against my chest.  ”I’m sure there’s pamphlets or something.”

”You’re the one that adopted a pre-teen boy,” she reminded me.  ”You literally signed up for this.”

”Maybe we can give him back now,” I joked.  I would never.  Neither would she.

---

For the better part of the day, I avoided Frankie the best I could.  It’s not the easiest of conversations to have and I never had that talk with anyone when I was growing up.  When I was young and my own father sat me down and decided to try and give me that talk, it went as smooth as you might expect from a man that had very little ability in the fatherhood department and even worse social skills.  Granted, I am certainly not the best father, but I try really hard to make the right decisions.  Most of the time I do, sometimes I don’t.

Noticing my avoidance of the situation, Lauren wouldn’t say a word to me all day long.  All she did was give me that look.  Spend more than a week with a woman and you know damn well what look I’m talking about.  It’s that one that sends chills down your spine.  It’s that look that says everything without uttering a single syllable.  It’s that one where you want to look away, but you just can’t and your body is motivated to leave the area in a fight or flight sort of involuntary reaction.

There’s more to my reluctance than just talking about growing up with a not yet 13 year old boy.  He’s aware of what I’ve done in the past.  How do I have that talk with him and not sound like a giant hypocrite?  I wanted to stop before he noticed, but I didn’t.  I wanted to be a good role model for him, and Talon too when he’s of age, but I most certainly am not.  This predicament is of my own making.  I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.  There are no words in existence that can defend my own actions and I know damn well he will challenge me on what I’ve done.  I’m okay with him challenging me.  I welcome that part.

But I don’t have answers to the questions about me that I know he has.  Moreover, he gets frustrated when he doesn’t hear the answers he wants.  When that happens, he has a tendency to act out.

After dinner, I went upstairs to install his new doorknob.  As I was finishing up, Frankie came into his room.

”Hey,” he greeted me.  ”What are you doing to my door?”

For a moment, with a screw hanging from my mouth, I only looked at him.

”Take a seat kiddo,” I said after removing the screw from my lip and zipping it into his door.

”Mom said you wanted to talk to me about something,” he said as he plopped down in his gaming chair.

”Yeah,” I agreed as I closed his door.  Setting the drill down on his desk, I reached into my front pocket and pulled out the keys.  Removing one from the ring, I slid it back into my pocket then handed him the other one.

”You gave me a lock?” he questioned as he looked at the key in his hand.

”Yeah,” I answered as I nervously sat on the edge of his bed.  ”For your privacy.”

He looked at me with a somewhat scared look on his face when I said ‘privacy’.

”Mom saw you,” I said to him.  ”This morning.”

His eyes grew wide and his face turned beet red with embarrassment.

”Buddy, there’s nothin’ to be embarrassed about,” I said while he started nervously spinning left and right, then back again in his chair.  ”At your age, it’s literally the most natural thing you’re doing.”

”Mom saw me!” he protested.  ”I know she saw everything because I don’t…” his voice trailed for a second.  ”That’s so embarrassing,” he concluded quietly.

”Why is that embarrassing?” I asked.  I wasn’t being a smartass, I was genuinely curious.  My whole life, I never felt any shame if people saw me in an otherwise compromising situation.  No matter how old I was or how developed, I just never cared if people saw.

”How is it not?” he asked.  ”What boy wants their mother to walk in and see them with their weiner in their hand?”

”Mom doesn’t care that you’re doin’ that,” I argued.  ”She just wanted to make sure you had your privacy so you could.”

”Boys don’t want their moms to see their private parts!” he argued back.  ”Especially not when we’re doin’ that!  It’s… it’s… private!”

Maybe I’m missing that particular gene because I really just don’t get it.

”Okay, okay… let’s calm down.”

Now that I think about it, maybe I don’t get it because I grew up in a fortress surrounded by men and boys of all ages.  It was almost a regular occurrence for me to accidentally walk in on someone or someone else to walk in on me.  It was never intentional, but a quick retreat with a ‘sorry’ attached usually sufficed.  No one was ever embarrassed.  It just was what it was.

Growing up and being athletic and in sports, I can’t even begin to tell you the general weirdness of boys locker rooms.  From middle school through at least junior high, a lot of things go on there that no one would admit to as they grew older.  None of it sexual in nature at that age, but certainly exploratory with hands grabbing things that didn’t belong to them followed by laughs and wrestling around.  It was just horseplay and nothing more.

Naturally, I tried to put myself in his shoes and think about what I’d have done if I was doing that and my mother walked in on me.  She died when I was an infant though, so it’s kind of impossible for me to know for sure.

Anyway, the time came for me to change directions.

”Homecoming in a week,” I reminded him.  To which, he smiled pleasantly as he thought of his girlfriend.  ”That reminds me, I picked up your suit yesterday.”

For a few minutes, I continued to skirt around the actual subject of what I was trying to talk about.  In a general sense, I wasn’t nervous to talk to him about sex and what it means or any of that.  Just… I know the kind of man that I’ve been so far.  In my head, I always said he was naive and didn’t see what I was really doing while I said many times that I wanted to be a better role model for him.  I was lying to myself.  He called me on it not long before Lauren and I had our wedding.

I stopped.

I deserve exactly zero credit for that.  I’ve tried to stop several times, but it never sticks.  Once, I even entered therapy for sex addiction and my therapist eventually told me I did not have an addiction.  Almost immediately after leaving therapy, I found myself inside yet another woman that was not my wife.

It’s disgusting.  It’s sickening.  It’s embarrassing.  I wish I wasn’t that way but no matter how hard I try not to be, no matter how much pressure I put on myself to do better, to be better, I always fuck it up.  One body with tight curves, one glancing smile, one hint of flowery perfume and my body is already preparing itself.  Like I can’t control the impulse.  I love women.  I like men too, but not nearly as much as I enjoy the female persuasion.

I’m a pretty attractive guy and that opens a lot of bedroom doors.  My brain knows that and every fucking time it’s like “let’s see if I still got it.”  Spoiler alert, I almost always “still got it.”

”Let’s talk about you,” I said to Frankie.  He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

Well…

Here goes nothin’.