I’d walked into the kitchen hoping to find a piece of pizza in the refrigerator. While I rummaged through the leftovers, my mother sat down at the kitchen table.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Pizza.”

“I threw it out,” she said.

I spun around. “Why?”

“Because it was from Monday night.” She gestured to the chair across from her. “You don’t need to get sick.”

I noticed a plate of cookies on the table that weren’t there when I left for school. My mother often baked, and cookies were her specialty. I meandered to the table, lowered my backpack to the floor, and sat across from her.

“They’re oatmeal and raisin,” she said.

I searched my mind for what I might have done to warrant an after school sit down discussion. I’d been difficult to deal with since my grandmother’s passing, but not so much that a face-to-face with my mother was necessary.

I looked her over, hoping to find a hint on her face as to what the conversation was going to be about. Short of her long dark hair and natural beauty, I found nothing.

She was a tall woman, standing five feet and ten inches without shoes. Lean and as muscular as most farm workers, she seemed much younger than her age of thirty-seven years. Her youthful appearance and hourglass figure earned her MILF – Mom I’d Like to Fuck – status from most of the kids at school.

They said it in my absence. I needed to kick off my boots to count the amount of kids who got their asses whipped for saying they wanted to fuck my mother. Nonetheless, I’d often overhear a conversation where someone wanted to fuck Ghost’s mother. It never ended well for the person making the claim.

She reached for a cookie. “I just baked them.”

It didn’t take much coercing to get me to eat an oatmeal cookie. As my mother was aware, they were my favorite. Somewhat hesitant, I reached for the plate, still wondering what I did wrong.

I bent the cookie until it broke in two, and then met her hard-to-read gaze. “What did I do?”

She pinched a thumbprint-sized bite from the cookie and paused. “Nothing. I just wanted to have a talk with you.”

It was never that simple. My mother rarely stuck her nose in my business. When she did, there was always a reason for it.

“About what?” I asked.

“You’re sixteen,” she began. “We probably should have had this talk long ago.”

The sex talk.

She was going to have the sex talk with me over a plate of oatmeal cookies. I couldn’t tell her that Amy Betterman had given me a hand job in her dad’s truck, or that Shelly Pickert had sucked my dick at the end of sophomore year, just before summer break. I damned sure wasn’t going to let her find out that I’d shared half a bottle of Goose’s dad’s whisky with Patty Wilson, and that she let me fuck her in her back yard while we were half drunk.

The hand job sparked interest in having girls do what I’d already spent twelve months trying to perfect. I learned that it was much more satisfying to watch a girl stroke my dick than do it myself.

Shelly’s blowjob opened the door for me to try and stick my dick in every willing mouth in Great Falls, Montana. That love for blowjobs got my dick into Patty’s very willing – and capable – mouth.

I found her insistence to swallow my spunk grotesque at first but was fascinated by it later. That fascination lured me to return day after day, while her mother was at work. Her willingness to suck my dick on any given day made her the perfect candidate for experimental sex.

The whiskey was more to boost my courage than to lower Patty’s resistance. She was willing from the start. When the deed was done, I left Patty in the wet summer grass with her panties around one ankle and an empty bottle of whisky at her side. Filled with guilt, I couldn’t run home fast enough to escape the cloud of shame that seemed to loom over me.

Her foul-smelling pussy left me wondering if sex was worth it. I spent a half hour in the shower trying to scrub the rotten residue off my dick, only to find out later that she had some sort of an infection.

Sitting across from my mother, I seriously doubted I’d ever have sex again. Blowjobs, on the other hand, were as commonplace as going to the movie theater, and I went to the movies quite often.

I situated my backpack but didn’t look up. “Is this about sex?”

“Should it be?” she asked.

Not wanting to make eye contact with her, I fidgeted with the bag. “No.”

“There’s nothing down there that needs your attention, Porter. Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she said.

I looked up. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re sixteen,” she said. “We need to have this talk.”

“I know about sex, ma.” As if it would save me from continuing, I poked both halves of the cookie into my mouth.

“Have you had sex?” she asked.

I chewed the mouthful of cookie, wondering if I should tell her about Patty. I wanted my first sexual encounter to be memorable. Something I’d talk about with my four half-brothers while we smoked cigarettes and drank warm beers. Instead, it was something I’d chosen to forget. It had only been seven months. It seemed like a lifetime had passed.

If I couldn’t recall the details surrounding that night, I wondered if I could convince myself it didn’t happen. A drunken dream. A sexual tale conjured up by a half-drunk teenage boy with a hard on and a mind filled with sexual desire. But the memories wouldn’t go away. The underwear and jeans I threw away stood as a reminder each time I searched for a pair of jeans to wear to school.

Lying to my mother wasn’t something that I’d ever done, and Patty Wilson’s stinky pussy wasn’t going to get me to start. I drew a long breath, reached for another cookie, and braced myself for her reaction.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“Porter Quentin Reeves,” she screeched. “You’re sixteen!”

I slumped into my chair. “I’m sorry.”

It was true. I was sorry. Not for the hand jobs or the blow jobs, but for the sex. I wished I could take it back, primarily because of the putrid stench that caused me to throw away my clothes.

She forced a sigh. “So am I. I shouldn’t have yelled.” She reached for another cookie. “Who was she? Will you tell me?”

I didn’t want to. I doubted she’d be happy with my choice. Patty’s mother was a barfly, and was talked about more than religion, politics, or the weather in our town. She wasn’t married, and never had been. If the stories about her were true, she paid her rent with money she made from having sex with the ranch hands that flocked to town seeking seasonal work.

I looked away. “Patty Wilson.”

“Dear God,” my mother gasped. “We need to get you to the doctor.”

My heart shot into my throat. “Why?”

She pushed herself away from the table. “If she’s like her mother, she’s liable to have a plethora of diseases. Did you wear a condom? Please tell me you wore a condom.”

I didn’t. I wondered if the foul odor was a hint of the many diseases she carried. “I uhhm.” I offered an apologetic shrug. “I forgot.”

Her eyes widened to the point I feared they’d fall from the sockets and roll across the table. “You forgot?” she bellowed. “Forgot? Porter, you don’t forget the condom. That’s like forgetting to get dressed before you step out into a blizzard.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her face distorted into a look that could only be described as disgust. “We’ll get you to the doctor on Monday.”

I reached for another cookie only because I didn’t know what else to do. “Am I going to be okay?”

The look on her face faded, but not completely. She looked like she did the night she tried oysters for the first – and last – time. It was as if she could taste what I’d spent two weeks smelling.

She swallowed hard, and then forced a cracked smile. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

With a cookie in my left hand, I reached for my backpack with my right. I wanted to go to the upstairs shower and scrub my dick until I knew it was clean of everything Patty Wilson left on it.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“No,” she said in a stern voice. “That’s not all,”

I broke the cookie in two and waited for the wrath of my mother to come down upon me. Instead of attacking, she pinched a small piece of cookie between her fingers and gingerly placed it in her mouth.

After swallowing it, she sighed. “There will be girls that you’ll want to have sex with for the sake of satisfying your urges,” she explained. “It’s sad, but that’s what boys do.”

“Then, one day, you’ll meet someone you fall in love with. When you find that woman, you’ll know who she is. She’ll be different than the rest.” She broke off another piece of cookie but didn’t eat it. “Until you find her, you’ll have meaningless sex. You need to be truthful – before you have sex – about what your intentions are. It’s the right thing to do. The women are either a one-night-stand, or they’re not. Do you know what a one-night-stand is, Porter?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded. “I do.”

“Don’t you dare leave a woman wondering which category she falls into. Ever. If she knows upfront what your intentions are, it’ll save you – and her – a lot of emotional problems down the road.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Saying nothing leaves a woman to believe she’s special. In her mind, the two of you are sharing something sacred. She’ll believe, unless you tell her otherwise, that she’s in a relationship with you. If you tell her upfront that you’re only wanting sex, it gives her an opportunity to decide if she wants to simply satisfy her urges. You owe it to every woman to let her know where she stands. Before you have sex.”

I nodded but didn’t respond.

“One more thing,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell a woman she’s special just to get in her pants. If I find out you’ve done such a thing, I’ll hit you in the head with your grandmother’s cast iron skillet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Porter?”

“Yes?”

She held my gaze. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Now, and forever,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I promise.”

She studied the piece of cookie she held. “There’s nothing that’ll break a woman’s heart quicker than believing she’s special, only to find out later that she’s been used for sex.”

“I promised, ma. It won’t happen.”

I assumed she was speaking of my father but didn’t ask. He was a subject we didn’t discuss. I’d always suspected he was one of the ranch hands that came and went, and that she never really knew him. I now wondered if he had misled her into believing she was special, only to leave her with every indication that she was nothing more than a one-night-stand.

“Ma,” I said, hoping to take her attention away from the cookie.

She looked up. I no longer questioned if she was speaking of the man who fathered me. Her wet eyes gave all the answers I needed.

“Yes?”

“I’ll be honest with them, I promise.” I glanced at my cookie and then met her teary-eyed gaze. “When can we go to the doctor?”

She chuckled as she wiped her eyes. “We’ll go on Monday.”

That Monday I found out I had Chlamydia. A dose of antibiotics cured it but left me forever fearful of having unprotected sex. From that day forward, I never had sex without using protection – or without first explaining to the woman that all we were doing was fucking.

My mother passed away the following year, but her words of wisdom were the fabric that held me together.

I blamed kissing Abby on my altered state of mind. The tumor had undoubtedly caused pressure to build on whatever portion of my brain produced logic. Consequently, it appeared I’d lost my ability to reason.

I was now forced to categorize her. She didn’t fit in the one-night-stand slot, but I struggled to admit it. Nonetheless, she didn’t belong there. That only left one place for her.

Placing her there scared the absolute shit out of me.