Page 107 of What Boys Learn

“Fine. I really like jazz.”

“You forgot about what I was saying before. Blue water. Or breasts.”

I fight the urge to crack up. Fine. Blue water.Andbreasts.

“Tell me you like jazz.”

“I . . .reallylike jazz.”

He laughs and turns his attention back to the dirty semi. He swerves into the left lane, directly in front of another car that was trying to pass. Cutting it close. The guy behind us lays on his horn. Who gives a fuck? The Jag accelerates effortlessly. Then we’re back in the right lane, hard swerve, right in front of the big semi until he gasses it.

Matt laughs. “How’s your pulse?”

“Um, high.”

“Some people thrive on adrenaline. Some people actually think better in a state of high arousal.” He smiles. “And some people—men—can’t be aroused when there’s not something at stake. A bit of risk. Resistance. The chance of being caught. The chance of something going wrong. Something . . .extra. What’s your extra, Benjamin?”

“I don’t know.”

He’s already given me the porn talk. That was the first week of sessions, back in Pleasant Park. I couldn’t believe when he started going on about the smuttiest possible situations and explaining that he had no problem with fucking or fisting or whatever people wanted to do. The problem was that itwasn’t real. I thought that was the point. It wasn’t real, so it was okay. Actors versus—you know—versus the girl you’d actually ask to the prom.

He said it was the opposite. It wasn’t real, so it was wrong. Men who watched too much porn couldn’t deal with reallife sex with real-life women, Dr. C—Matt—told me. They become weak.

“Predator or prey,” he says, out of the blue. “That pieceof-shit Audi didn’t even belong in the left lane.”

I’m just glad he’s back to talking about cars. But then I sneak a look over at his face and I get that sinking feeling. He’s not.

“A year from now,” he keeps going, “maybe you could have done okay with Izzy Scarlatti, but you were punching above your weight. You never could have outperformed a man like Christopher Weber. Older, more suave. Not such a good driver, though . . .”

He pauses, chuckling, which is an improvement. Usually when he talks about Weber it’s like when he talks about his ex-wife, and he gets all sulky. I guess Weber was a big disappointment to him. A good student at the institute place, and maybe okay for a while once he left, but then he got out of control. That’s the part I don’t like to hear about, now that I know who Weber is, or was. The shithead who gave Sid drugs and had sex with her. The pervert who was in the motel with Izzy.

“What are you thinking about, Benjamin?”

I don’t want to say Weber, so I say, “Izzy.”

“Still mad at her?”

“Kind of.”

“Try some positive thinking. If people didn’t make stupid choices, where would the rest of us be? You’re one or the other. Predator . . .”

“Or prey,” I say, giving him the answer that ends the stupid word game.

“What’s yourextra, Benjamin?” Matt asks again. We’re back to that.

“I don’t know,” I say. Honestly.

He laughs. “Fair enough. How could you?”

He reaches across a hand and brushes my bangs, messing them up, like I’m about ten years old.

“Go for the single girls, the ones the other guys ignore,” he says. “Not the ugly ones—I’m not saying that, though there’s a good argument for it. The grateful ones. The strays.”

I do my best to stare ahead and look bored.Menomonee Falls. Germantown.

“And here’s a thing about virgins, if you happen to like younger girls, which I do. Far less trouble. They may not know how to say yes, but they also don’t know how to say no. I know, you’d think they would. But chemistry is on our side. You’ve probably heard about the fight-or-flight response.”

I nod.