Sketch # 32

She thinks sex shouldn't mean anything.

She refuses to believe there's more to it than just the tongue on the clitoris, two (or in her last escapade, four) mouths working furiously against each other, the penis penetrating the vagina. She is young, too young to understand how one night, no matter how many strings are left untied, can destroy people for a lifetime. Without sounding moralistic, how do I explain to her that it's the closest that two people can ever be, that it's intimacy of the highest degree? In her mind, I've become the mother she never wanted; I don't blame her for turning away.

Though I want to help her, I know it's beyond me. All I can offer her are some of my old Diane prescriptions, my gynecologist's number, and a last plea to consider using the Rabbit in lieu of her mindless encounters with strange men. I'll be fine, she tells me, I know what I'm doing.

It's all I can do to keep from crying. So this is what it means to be impotent: to feel powerless as you watch someone you love fall into ruin.

Perhaps she actually wants this, I think, maybe she does this because she wants to know what it's like to feel. And that's when I start to weep.