My Father Didn’t Want to Have the Talk

Ace Boggess

He gave me a book because I liked to read. I was, what, twelve? Thirteen? Of course, I scanned every page of oversimplifications, Cliff’s Notes to clitoris & cock, not an idea I hadn’t read about explicitly in other books or watched in porn on VHS. I felt it my duty as his son never to refuse even the meaningless gifts. This was postdivorce, after all, & each of us needed some kind of tether. I doubt my father read the book, but can’t imagine him asking a clerk for it at Waldenbooks. He’d be more embarrassed today, or offended by hints of other versions of the world those pages discussed in passing. Older, too, I know there are some fires you walk across, others you dance around. This was one to flee like a house ablaze, & on the way out, grab everything you can.