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Maybe maturity is wanting what you want, instead of what somebody else tells you you should want.

Maybe, Sigfrid, dear old tin god, but what it feels like is mature is dead.

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…stuff with all the calories. They spoiled me, buying me more food than I needed."

I still like to be spoiled. Now I get a higher class of diet, not as fattening, about a thousand times as expensive. I've had real caviar. Often. It gets flown in from the aquarium at Galveston. I have real champagne, and butter. . . . "I remember lying in bed," I say, "I guess I was very small, maybe about three. I had a teddytalker. I took it to bed with me, and it told me little stories, and I stuck pencils into it and tried to pull its ears off. I loved that thing, Sigfrid."

I stop, and Sigfrid picks up immediately. "Why are you crying, Robbie?"

"I don't know!" I bawl, tears running down my face, and I look at my watch, the skipping green numerals rippling through the tears. "Oh," I say, very conversationally, and sit up, the tears still rolling down my face but the fountain turned off, "I've really got to go now, Sigfrid. I've got a date. Her name's Tania. Beautiful girl. The Houston Symphony. She loves Mendelssohn and roses, and I want to see if I can pick up some of those dark-blue hybrids that will go with her eyes."

"Rob, we've got nearly ten minutes left."

"I'll make it up another time." I know he can't do that, so I add quickly, "May I use your bathroom? I need to."

"Are you going to excrete your feelings, Rob?"

"Oh, don't be smart. I know what you're saying. I know this looks like a typical displacement mechanism--"

"Rob."

"--all right, I mean, it looks like I'm copping out. But I honestly do have to go. To the bathroom, I mean. And to the florist's, too. Tani is pretty special. She's a fine person. I'm not talking about sex, but that's great, too. She can g-- She can--"

"Rob? What are you trying to say?"

I take a breath and manage to say: "She's great at oral sex, Sigfrid."

"Rob?"

I recognize that tone. Sigfrid's repertory of vocal modes is quite large, but parts of it I have learned to identify. He thinks he is on the track of something.

"What?"

"Rob, what do you call it when a woman gives you oral sex?"

"Oh, Christ, Sigfrid, what kind of dumb game is this one?"

"What do you call it, Rob?"

"Ah! You know as well as I do."

"Please tell me what you call it, Rob."

"They say, like, 'She eats me.'"

"What other expression, Rob?"

"Lots of them! 'Giving head,' that's one. I guess I've heard a thousand terms for it."

"What other, Rob?"

I have been building up to rage and pain and it suddenly boils over. "Don't play these fucking games with me, Sigfrid!" My gut aches, and I am afraid I am going to mess my pants; it is lIke being a baby again. "Jesus, Sigfrid! When I was a little kid I used to talk to my teddy. Now I'm forty-five and I'm still talking to a stupid machine as if it was alive!"