It gives me a bad, shivery feeling, entering the empty room. But it isn’t dark this time. The curtains are pulled wide open, revealing the swaying palms behind them. The room is neat and freshly serviced, bed made, carpet vacuumed, clean towels on the rack, and a mint on our pillows.

I plop down in the center of my bed and turn on the television. I scroll through the channels, but there’s nothing good on, until, as fate would have it, I land on an episode of some sexy Scottish show I’ve heard about before but never watched until now.

I watch for a while. It’s not the first episode, but I think I get the basic idea of where the story’s going.

It’s not long before the sexy Scottish shows gets, well, sexy. And then it gets downright graphic.

After that I turn the TV off. Even here, in the air-conditioned hotel room, I feel suddenly hot. The sex scene has left me worked up—okay, I’ll admit that, but it’s also left me with some questions, and they’re not about condoms or herpes or what kind of underwear I should wear.

I find my sketchbook and open it to the page that says THE SEX PLAN. On the opposing page I jot down a few thoughts I feel that I should probably sort out before Saturday night.

Thoughts I have.

About sex.

To start with, orgasms. The woman in that show made a lot of noise during sex, and she had an orgasm after like sixty seconds. I’m not supposed to have an orgasm in sixty seconds, am I? The show’s just compressing things for the sake of time, right?

It isn’t real life. Is it?

How long does it typically take to have an orgasm?

Is that even something I should expect?

I know about the mechanics of it all. Mom told me about the birds and the bees when I was kid. I had health class. Afton talked about it some, after it happened with her. There was even a point a few months ago when, after I made out all evening with Leo, I came home and lay down on my bed with a mirror and looked—down there—to attempt to figure out what was what and why and how could it possibly work?

I’ve masturbated a few times, but I’ve never been adept at it. It seems like a lot of work.

It’s almost disturbing, how much I don’t know about myself. It’s frustrating to think that right now, as I’m sitting here freewriting about my sex anxiety, Nick is probably in his room playing his video game, his mind completely unworried about all of this. He can just show up and do it. Bam.

I sigh and close the sketchbook.

Boys have it so much easier.

Chapter 27

27