Win Some, Lose Some

Travis chuckled.

“I bet,” he said. “Are you going to have her over here again?”

“We still have some work on our project to do,” I said, “so maybe. Probably.”

“You gonna kiss her?” he asked as he wiggled his eyebrows.

I shook my head.

“You want to?”

“I don’t know, Travis.” I felt myself tensing up. “I don’t know anything about any of that.”

“I know Kyle gave you ‘the talk’ when you were younger,” he said.

“‘The talk’?”

“You know,” Travis said with another raise of his eyebrows, “that talk.”

“What talk?”

“Ugh!” Travis stood and took a few steps away before he turned around to look at me. “The sex talk!”

“Yes.”

“I’d guess that talk was probably pretty…‘mechanical’ in nature.”

“You can use machines?” I asked.

Travis began to laugh.

“Well…um…not what I meant,” he said, “though yeah, you can.”

A portion of the discussion between my father and me about sexual reproduction made a quick drive-by in my brain.

“I don’t want to have a baby,” I said.

“No, you don’t, but there are all kinds of birth control and stuff out there. She could already be on The Pill.”

I glanced up at my uncle for a long moment. My gaze danced around his eyes, and I could see he wasn’t angry or upset any more. He seemed relieved, maybe, and I wondered if he thought I was going to actually have a girlfriend, like he mentioned before.

I wasn’t so sure about that. He was talking about sex, and I hadn’t even kissed her or anything. I was pretty sure you were supposed to do that first.

“Travis, I wouldn’t have any idea what to do,” I finally said. “I mean, not at all. I know what gets done but…nothing else.”

“Well, dude,” Travis said as he stood up from the couch, “I would sit here and tell you everything about it”—he chuckled again—“but if I did, I’d be here all night. You’d learn a lot, too. You would also freak out on me about every fourth word, so I’m not going to do it.”

Travis grabbed his keys from the table near the door.

“But you know what?”

“What?”

“Google is damn handy.” Travis continued to laugh softly as he went out the door.

Google.

Google what?