Page 77 of What Boys Learn

“Thrift store?” I asked. “I don’t remember that one.”

He didn’t look up. “Dr. Campbell gave it to me. The person who lived in that separate apartment left a bunch of stuff behind. He was going to donate the clothes to Goodwill but he offered me some shirts.”

I made a face. “He just gave away the person’s shirts?”

“They moved out!”

I couldn’t shake it off. The weird part wasn’t just the clothes, it was the fact I didn’t remember Benjamin leaving Curtis’s carrying anything.

“This was today?”

Benjamin laughed, eyes still down on his food. “You were pretty loopy coming out of that hypnosis.”

“I guess I should have let you drive, then.”

“Yeah, I guess you should have.”

I no longer wanted to talk him into trying hypnosis, but I didn’t want to prejudice him against it, either. “It did feel a little strange, but mostly it made me sleepy.” I looked down. “And hungry.” I’d already inhaled half of the food on my plate.

He shook his head. “Still not into it.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fair.”

We were halfway through eating when the sound of a funky bass scale started up from below us. The vibrations rattled the glasses in the nearest cupboard. When a magnet fell off the fridge, Benjamin laughed.

“You’ve been stuck in your room a lot, lately,” I said. “I never wanted you to feel like a prisoner this summer. Didn’t you say David offered to teach you guitar?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t want to accept because he’s too much of a stoner? Because I know that part already.”

“No, because when I go down there, he usually has a few other guys over, and I don’t like what they’re into.”

“Video games?”

“Nope.”

I waited what felt like a reasonable amount of time. When he still hadn’t volunteered any hints, I said, “I know David smokes a lot of pot. I hope they’re not using other drugs down there.”

Benjamin shrugged. “No. Just watching porn. I don’t like it.” I couldn’t tell if he was being honest or just telling me—a woman, his mother—what he thought I wanted to hear. Maybe he could read my skepticism because he added, “Dr. Campbell says that’s good I don’t want to watch porn with them. He says they’re asking for problems.”

“Because they’re watching porn . . . in a group?”

“Watching too much at all. He says most guys watch so much that when they finally have real sex, like on a regular basis, they can’t get it up without acting out what they’ve seen in movies. Like they don’t even feel comfortable with a real body.”

A real body. The phrasing seemed odd, but maybe he was just trying to avoid saying “a real woman” or anything non-inclusive.

“So,” I treaded carefully, “Dr. Campbell is anti-porn.”

“Pretty much. Not because he’s worried that it’s not fair to women or something. It’s because he thinks men get messed up. They live in fantasyland for so long, they get addicted to fake sex. Sometimes they can’t perform.”

He must have noticed my eyebrows lift in response to the last word.

“I was trying not to say ‘fuck,’ Mom.”

“Thank you.” I took a few more bites. “Do you want to hear my opinion, as a woman?”

“Do I have a choice?”