Nude Men

I’m talking about is a little more than ‘interested,’ ” she says.
    “Well, whatever, then, but do it with someone your own age.”
    “I love boys my own age, but in a different way.”
    “In what way?”
    “Oh... I would like to kiss them.”
    I don’t dare ask her how she loves me, so I ask, “Why don’t you, then?”
    “I don’t have the guts.”
    I raise my eyebrows. “You don’t ?”
    She catches my meaning, smiles, and tries to explain. “I admire them too much. They make me shy.”
    “I’m sure you don’t mean all of them. You mean one, right?”
    “I guess.”
    A moment later, she says, “When I’m at home, in my room, I sometimes wish a man, a stranger, would come and make love to me. He is not you, but that doesn’t matter.”
    “Is he one of your mother’s nude models?”
    “He could be, or he could not be. In my mind I think he mostly comes from the outside.”
    I am silent while I think this over.
    Then she says, “I’m not in love with you. I don’t admire you. Do you mind?”
    “No, I’m delighted.”
    “But I love you like a best friend I don’t respect, a best friend I feel sorry for.”
    Ow. Terribly insulted. Hurt feelings. She’s not very nice, but I don’t feel it would be proper for me to express my pain, under the circumstances. The circumstances being her advances toward me, most of the time. I’m surprised that such a young girl can play with my mind, and hurt me, as successfully as a woman three times her age.
    She finally goes to her room. She calls me on the phone. “Can you please come to my room?” she says.
    “Why?”
    “I want you to show me how to turn on the TV.”
    “It’s very simple.”
    “No; I can’t figure it out.”
    I sigh. “Okay.” I hang up and leave my room.
    I am staring at my bare feet, which are pounding the carpeted hallway, and I think to myself: I will be immensely surprised if there isn’t a little plot simmering behind her request.
    I open her door. She is standing in the middle of her room, kissing the hairy porter. She even has her arms around him. She’s kissing him on the mouth, looking at me.
    My first instinct, when I see them, is to say, “Oh, excuse me,” back out of the room, and close the door. But I don’t. I just stand there. The porter pulls away from Sara, frowning, and rushes out.
    I notice the TV is on.
    “Your TV is on,” I tell her.
    “He showed me,” she says.
    I leave without saying anything.
     
    I n the morning we do the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. We pass a store that can put your picture on the cover of a magazine. We don’t really want to do it, but then I see that they have Screen magazine as one of the choices, and I decide we simply must do it. So we all three have our picture taken, and they put it on the cover. The picture is horribly ugly of me and not so good of my mom, but it’s great of Sara. She’s giving me a kiss on one cheek, and my mother is giving me a kiss on my other cheek. Next to our faces it says “Hot Stuff.” Mom wants me to tear up the picture, but Sara says she wants to keep it as a souvenir for her mother. To this I object energetically. I don’t want darling Lady Henrietta to see that monstrous picture of me. But Sara wins. We let her keep it.
     
    I f she did nothing, I would have no desire for her. But it’s her behavior. She’s so seductive. And I feel she loves me, with a strange and deep affection. She may say that she’s not in love with me, and I guess I believe her. It doesn’t make me feel good; not that I want her to be in love with me, but the fact that she says it hurts me. It reinforces my inferiority complex, the idea that no woman could be in love with me, no woman could find me attractive. I act too insecure, meek, cowardly, nerdy, effeminate, petty, mediocre intelligence, no sense of humor, immature, uptight. But I feel she loves me because she feels sooo comfortable with me and is sooo unintimidated by me, because she has sooo little admiration for me. Nevertheless, she loves me. I am her best friend. And I am grateful for her love. It’s something I have not had, and have missed.
     
    M y mother goes back to the hotel after lunch. She’s had enough of Disney World, and the lines, and the men, and Sara’s word games.
     
    S ara tells me she wants to go to a seed auction.
    “What?” I ask her.
    “Yes, I really want to do that.”
    “But what is it, and where do they have one?”
    “It is what it sounds like. And