More Happy Than Not

The apartment feels extra small, my head even smaller, so I go outside to breathe for a second or minute or hour, but no longer than that because I am having sex tonight whether I know how to or not. I spot Brendan heading into a staircase, call his name, and he holds the door open. He got his first blow job at thirteen from this girl Charlene, and he would go on and on about it whenever we played video games. I hated him for achieving something I hadn’t, but he’s actually the kind of person whose ways I should tap into.

“Yo. You got a second?”

“Uh.” We both look down at his hand and he’s carrying weed in a Ziploc bag. Long gone are the days when he was a solitaire whiz. “I actually gotta go handle this.”

I make my way past him before he can close the door. The staircase smells like fresh piss and I see the puddle on the floor; it was probably Skinny-Dave who is very territorial. “You blazing or dealing?”

Brendan checks his watch. “Dealing. Customer is coming in a minute.”

“I’ll be fast. I need to know how to have sex.”

“Let’s hope it’s not fast for your sake.”

“Thanks, asshole. Help me not fuck this up.”

He shakes his pungent weed in my face. “I gotta make some bank, A.”

“And I gotta make my girlfriend happy, B.” I pull out the two condoms I bought from work yesterday and shake them in his face. “Look, just give me some tips or tell me girls don’t really care about their first times or something. I’m freaking out right now that I’m not—I swear to God I will pay Me-Crazy to destroy you if you repeat this—that I’m not going to be good enough.”

Brendan rubs his eyes. “Fuck all that. I boned a bunch of girls just so I could get off and get better.”

“But I would never treat Genevieve like that.” I wouldn’t use any girl like that. Maybe Brendan isn’t the right person to ask after all.

“That’s why you’re a virgin. Go ask Nolan for advice.”

“Nolan, who’s fathered two kids at seventeen? No thanks.”

“Aaron, don’t be some little boy who everyone will think is a punk or fag if you bitch out.”

“I’m not trying to bitch out!”

Brendan’s phone rings. “It’s my customer. You gotta bounce.”

I don’t move. I expect my sort of best friend to step his game up during this big day for me. “I need you to do better than that.”

“What, did your father not give you a sex talk before he kicked it?”

Really crude way of labeling my dad’s suicide, I know. “No, he would always joke that we had HBO. I overheard him telling Eric some stuff one time, though.”

“There you go. Ask your brother.” I’m about to protest when he stops me. “Look, unless you’re about to buy this weed off me, you need to go.” Brendan fake-smiles with a hand out for money. I turn away. “That’s what I thought,” he says. “Man up tonight.”

There’s a list of things I would rather do than have the sex talk with my brother, but dying a virgin isn’t on it.

Eric is playing the latest Halo game—I’ve lost count to which one this is—and his match is finally coming to a close. I have no idea what to say. We sometimes play racing games together, less so these days. We definitely never talk to each other about monumental life things, not even Dad’s death. His match ends and I stop acting like I’m reading Scorpius Hawthorne and the Crypt of Lies and sit up from my bed.

“Do you remember Dad’s sex talk?”

Eric doesn’t turn, but I’m sure the words are sinking in. He speaks into his headset, telling his “soldiers” he needs two minutes, and then mutes the microphone. “Yeah. Those talks are always really scarring.”

We aren’t looking at each other. He’s staring at the postgame stats, probably analyzing how his team could’ve done better, and

I’m shifting from the worn yellowed stains in the corners of the room to outside the window where life isn’t awkward. “What did he say to you?”

“Why do you care?”

“I want to know what he would’ve told me.”

Eric taps buttons that have zero effect on the menu screen. “He said he didn’t think about feelings when he was our age. Grandpa encouraged him to just have fun when he was ready, and to always make sure to wear a condom so he didn’t have to grow up too soon like some of his friends did. And he would’ve said you’re making him proud if you actually feel ready.”