Here’s a story about my father, one I never could have told Luke: I was twelve when I discovered pornography, on that first edge of things. (Serena’s mother was already dead.) I looked for hours that first night, but didn’t feel anything flicker in myself until I began clicking on the insistent ads, which, once touched, bloomed into all manner of images, filling the screen with naked bodies slapping against each other or purled and poised, tongues and fingers extended. I suppose I too find my ecstasy in excess. Before this I had only seen the soft-colored sex scenes you find in PG-13 films. I had only recently worn out my gruesome bed-man. I remember the shame afterward, as I closed each window, and each one resisted closure as aggressively as it had before. Except now each blooming felt like an affront, a hydra sprouting new and uglier heads, and by the time the screen was blank I was cold and tired and disgusted.

Of course, I know now that no matter what you can imagine, someone, somewhere, is masturbating to it. Some of these urges have names. Psychrophilia: sexual arousal from being cold; agalmatophilia: sexual attraction to statues; nebulophilia: arousal by fog; lithophilia: attraction to stone and/or gravel; climacophilia: arousal from falling down stairs; chasmophilia: attraction to caverns and valleys. Don’t be shocked. Don’t laugh. We’re all deviants. (Does this mean none of us are?)

(Well—no.)

My father approached me a few days later with a book. “I’ve noticed you’ve been looking at some pretty hard-core pornography on the internet,” he said.

I could say nothing. I wanted to coil into myself like a pill bug, beginning with the back of my throat. I searched for an explanation, or some kind of denial, but my father just stood there, holding out the book.

“If you’re interested in knowing more about the theory and history of porn—why people look at it, why they make it, its place in our society—you could read this.” He waggled the book at me. “It offers a little bit of context.”

This was unbearable: porn, he’d said. I can’t remember what I mumbled back, but I know I didn’t take the book. I felt worse than I would have if he had punished me.

I wonder now what my mother would have done if she had been the one to discover this early exploration. She wouldn’t have given me reading material, of that I am certain. Maybe a slap. Maybe some condoms. Well. She wasn’t afraid of sex like he was.