Nude Men

course.”
    She hangs up. I remain sitting on the couch. Charlotte walks toward me slowly from the bedroom and says, “You had sex with an eleven-year-old girl?”
    I stare at her. I had forgotten that this was Saturday and that she was not at work.
    “I overheard the whole thing,” she says. “It is horrifying. I’m going to tell your mother.”
    “Why my mother? Why not the police?”
    “Because it’s family business.”
    She heads for the phone. I step in front of her.
    “I can call from anywhere,” she says.
    “I don’t want you to call my mother.”
    “Yes, I will, darling. It’s for your own good.”
    I feel all the rage toward her that has gathered in me over the months. The drop that overflows the glass. I give her a tremendous slap, with the intention of knocking her out.
    She is on the floor, motionless. I feel guilty immediately. I feel I am sinking to greater depths, first by having sex with an eleven-year-old girl, then by purposefully knocking out my girlfriend. What am I going to do with her now, kill her? It wouldn’t surprise me. And yet the slap has made me feel much better. Some of the rage is out of me.
    I kneel beside her. She lifts her head.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “You can call my mother if you want to. I’ll call her.”
    I pick up the phone, but she prevents me. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.
    Things seem to return to normal. Charlotte goes out shopping. An hour later my mother calls me.
    “Charlotte told me everything.”
    I can’t believe it.
    “I can’t believe it,” she says. “You had sex with Sara when we were in Disney World?”
    “Charlotte called you?”
    “Yes, thank God. You must be punished.” She hangs up.
    I will break up with Charlotte. I can’t stand her anymore. I will make her leave my apartment.
     
    I go and see Lady Henrietta.
    I ask her, “How could you approve of your daughter having sex at eleven years old? No mother accepts that.”
    She answers, “I’ve always been very open with my daughter, and she’s very open with me. I’ve encouraged her to talk to me about whatever she wanted, about boys she had crushes on, about what types of relationships she hoped to have with them.
    “I am for children’s sexual liberation,” she goes on. “Why should it be wrong for children to have sex if they feel like it? What right do we have to prevent them? But of course, they must feel like it. That’s what determines the line between children’s sexual liberation and child molestation. I am as strongly opposed to the latter as I am in favor of the former. I wanted to have sex when I was twelve. But I didn’t, because society said it was wrong, and I thought: Society must have a good reason for believing children should not have sex, a good reason that I don’t understand because I’m too young. But in a few years I’ll understand it, and I’ll be glad I waited.
    “I remember lying in bed,” she continues, “when I was thirteen, wondering how I’d be able to wait until the acceptable age, which I thought was around eighteen. The thought of waiting five years was hell. When I was sixteen, I almost did it but decided not to, because it was not quite the acceptable age. I still didn’t know why I shouldn’t do it, and I thought I must still be too young to understand. I am now thirty years old, and I haven’t yet discovered the reason why I had to wait until I was eighteen to have sex, and I’m angry about it. I decided not to make my child go through that nonsense. Everyone is different. Some people don’t find the idea of sex pleasant until they’re nineteen or twenty. Some never find it pleasant. Others want to start when they’re even younger than I was. And I’m not talking about innocent curiosity here. I’m talking about full-fledged sexual excitement, identical to what adults feel.”
    She looks at me in silence for a moment, and then says, “Before you came on the scene, Sara never expressed any desire to make love to anyone. She often talked about certain boys she wanted to kiss or even cuddle with. But when she met you, she started speaking to me about you immediately. She said she thought y0ll were wonderful, that she was in love with you and wanted to make love to you. I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about you back then. You’re not exactly run of the mill. I thought you were rather strange, no offense, especially when you first came to my studio to pose. I saw blood in your mouth. It scared me a