Barton was fourteen the first time he had sex. The woman was older than him—a friend of his parents and a widow. Or maybe not a widow. Maybe just a woman who did not like her husband much and never brought him to parties. That’s where it was—a party at the Heydale home, thrown by Barton’s father, who, though Barton found him terribly unlikable (always had and always would), was popular among his own peers, and even regarded as jovial and entertaining. The party was dull. Barton was drunk off alcohol he’d been sneaking from the guests’ glasses when they abandoned them. The maybe-widow also looked drunk. She was sitting alone and Barton got the idea she’d rather do anything than be alone at a party. He approached her and said, in what he thought was a suave way, that he found her to have an exotic air about her, and he wondered if she would like to join him somewhere private for a more intimate conversation.
In hindsight, Barton could not recall what had made him think this was a good strategy for seduction. He might have read it in a book, or heard another boy tell a story where he claimed to have used such a line. More likely it was something he’d misheard, or misread. Morphed and shaped in his teenage brain into a notion that seemed to him both original and clever. Or at least plausible.
But as soon as he said this, the maybe-widow began laughing. She laughed so hard and for so long, Barton turned to leave. She clasped him by the elbow to keep him in place, then laughed some more. Then, as abruptly as she’d started, she stopped and said, “All right. Where should we go?”
He led her with a sweaty hand to his father’s study, which was on the opposite end of the house, and where no other party guests would venture. Once there, the maybe-widow sat in his father’s chair.
“We’re here,” she said. “Now what do you want to do?”
Barton, flustered by the success of his plan, admitted he didn’t know.
“Come on then and I’ll show you,” the maybe-widow said. And she did.
In the days following the party, Barton existed as if in a dream. In his memory of this time, there was no school, no work at his father’s downtown office, no dour family dinners, though surely he must have continued with these things as normal. There was only the constant reliving of his minutes in the study with the maybe-widow. He did not see this preoccupation as a problem. His conquest had been tremendous, and he felt he’d earned the right to obsess over it. Besides, what else in his life was as interesting, or as pleasurable even by half? He dwelled, revisiting details, revising the scene, replaying and reconstructing until it was perfect in his mind. His erection was nearly constant.
He became certain if he knew where the maybe-widow lived, he would go to her home and break down her door in demand of more lovemaking. Instead, he found a moment alone with his father to ask when there might be another party.
Mr. Heydale was occupied in some way, as always, only giving his son his half attention.
“Another party? Why? So you can fuck Mrs. McCall again?”
Barton had never heard his father say fuck before, had never heard him mention sex in any way.
“I didn’t,” he said, already a liar even as a child.
“Yes, you did. I know what goes on in my own home.”
Barton said nothing to this, but for the first time in many days felt himself fully and immediately un-aroused.
Mr. Heydale set aside his papers. “The thing you must know about sex is . . .” he began.
Barton shoved his hands in his pockets and braced himself for diatribe. Sin, he thought the older man might say, though they were not a religious family. Or, dangerous. Or, improper.
“The thing you must know about sex is,” Mr. Heydale said, “that it’s everything.”
Barton looked up, thinking finally, fourteen years into his relationship with his father, he was being told something honest, something real.
“What I mean is,” the senior Heydale continued, “for a man like you, it’s everything. To a weak man. Sex consumes a weak man. He can’t see any life outside it. I only hoped you might wait awhile before you threw yourself into that pit. But, now, here you are.”
“I don’t even like her,” Barton lied again.
“It doesn’t matter if you like them,” his father said.
“But what about love?” Barton asked.
His father laughed and told him there was no such thing. Love was only an illusion, again belonging to weak men. Later, Barton would wish he’d asked what this meant about his father’s feelings toward his mother, but he was pretty sure he got the picture regardless.
“And what is sex for strong men?”
“It’s whatever they want.”
Then his father went back to his work, signaling the conversation over. Barton decided he did not agree with his father about love. Love was real, and not just for the weak. As for being called weak by his dad, well, that was fine—almost all his father’s advice came with insults. But it was the notion of strong men making sex into whatever they wanted that lodged most prominently in his teenage mind.
Barton went to his spare room and found Roslyn just as he’d left her, groggy and red-faced. She did nothing to encourage or discourage him as he got under the blankets beside her and wriggled out of his clothes. Her breath on his face was warm and sour. Barton did not linger once he was finished. He picked up his clothes and shuffled out of the room, saying a quick “Good night,” which he was not certain Roslyn heard. But alone in his own room after, he felt different. Even though the mechanics were the same, this was like no sex he’d ever had before, with Roslyn or anyone else. The reason, he thought, was affection.
That night with Roslyn was bright and brilliant, just like Barton’s day at the bank had been. He was a man with money and power and love. What other wonders might fill his world, now that he had opened himself up to them?