“No.”
“Do you ever make mental connections between sex and blood?”
“Hell no.”
“This may be a sensitive question, but I must ask it. You grew up in a rural area. Have you ever had sex with an animal of any kind?”
“Have you ever had someone pound the living shit out of you? Jesus.”
Lenz marks on his notepad. “Would it surprise you to learn that over a third of all males raised in rural areas have had intercourse with some type of animal to the point of orgasm?”
“It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, okay? And I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I hope you can control your temper, Mr. Cole. There is a method to my madness, I assure you. Now… what is your first sexual memory?”
“What do you mean? Like as a kid?”
“Your first sexual memory of any kind.”
“Well… trying to peek under my mother’s nightgown while she was sleeping, I guess.”
“What did you see?”
“Not much. It was dark.”
“After that?”
“Playing doctor in a tree house.”
“With girls or boys?”
“Girls. One girl.”
“The same age as you?”
“Yes.”
“What age?”
“I don’t know. Definitely little kids. Innocent stuff.”
“Any genital touching?”
“Nah. Just show-and-tell.”
“What about same-sex play?”
I hesitate. “A little.”
“One boy, or several together?”
“Several. Just neighborhood buddies.”
“How old were you?”
“Older. Still young though.”
“Any fear that you were a homosexual because of it?”
“We didn’t even know what a homosexual was. Discovering my dad’s stash of
“Have you had on-line sex with other men?”
“Not knowingly.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of men pretend to be women on-line. On regular networks it’s because there’s a shortage of women. But on EROS that doesn’t apply. Some men still do it there, so I guess I could unknowingly have fantasized sex with a man.”
“But you’ve never pretended to be a woman on-line?”
“Once. My wife told me I should try it to see what it felt like. I did, and I didn’t like it.”
“Why?”
“It’s like you’re assaulted from every side. Even on EROS, which is the most civilized on-line service, being a woman means you’re constantly approached by men. It’s the loss of control, I guess.”
“How old were you when you first had sex with a woman?”
“All the way? Complete intercourse?”
“Serious foreplay. Touching of genitals.”
“Probably… thirteen. With a couple of curious girls the same age. When I was fourteen this other girl and I did pretty much everything but intercourse. We were in love, though. Jesus. Like holding hands and kissing and touching each other was some kind of new religion. An indescribable intensity of feeling. Your heart pounding like it would punch through your chest. She was a year older than me.”
“How did that relationship end?”
“She broke my heart after seven months. I still remember that. Funny, huh? Seven months. I was physically sick. I think that warped me. I was never willing to fall totally for a girl after that. I knew what could happen.”
“How did that color your relationship with other girls? You were angry?”
“I don’t think so.”
“When did you first have sexual intercourse?
“Fifteen. The girl was eighteen.”
“A one-time experience?”
“Are you kidding? Once I got a taste of that, it was nonstop. Day and night, sneaking out of the house, anywhere we could find a place.”
“What kind of places did you usually find?”
“Outside, mostly. Or in the car, you know.”
“Not in her parents’ house?”
“No. We had a little respect.”
“What do you remember most about that relationship?”
I close my eyes. “Later, a couple of years later, I heard she’d become a slut. I’d really started to care for her after a while. She was country, but she read poetry, like that. She was a real person, just a little lost. She had feelings nobody knew about. It was sad.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well… I read her diary once.”
“She let you read her diary?”
“Not exactly. I went over to her house one time, and nobody answered the door. I went in anyway.”
“The door was open?”
“No. The few times I’d sneaked in to see her, I went though her window, so I did that. I looked around the house. Her room, especially. I found this little calendar where she’d written really small in the day spaces, like a diary.”
“What had she written?”
“All kinds of things. She had codes. Simple ones. There were Xs on the days when she had her periods, that was easy. Then there were some initials, which I figured out were guys she knew-guys her age. Then there was “M.L.” on some days, which stood for “made love.” I knew that because I’d been with her on those days.”
“All of them?”
“Not all.”
“How did you feel reading that diary?”
“Like a spy.”
“You put it back where you found it?”
“No. I took it.”
“Stole it?”
“Mm-hm. There were a few of them. I just took the one.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
“When did you get rid of it?”
“Just after I got married. With a bunch of old letters and stuff. I didn’t want Drewe finding that kind of thing. Stuff from old girlfriends, you know? Some of it was pretty explicit. And she knew some of the girls.”
“Why did you keep those letters so long?”
“All is vanity, right?”
Lenz scribbles something on his notepad. “How many women have you slept with in your life?”
