Issue #1 Winter 2002
Table Talk
by John Dufresne
At breakfast this morning, my son Bilbo asked me if I knew that Ann Landers or Dear Abby, one of them, says that masturbation does not kill virginity. I said, Do you know those two gals are actual sisters in real life. He said, Lame, Dad. No, I said, it's true, and they don't even speak to each other. He said, You're making that up. Then he asked me if I dreamed about making love to faceless women? I said, Of course not. What kind of question is that? Well then, what do they look like? he said. I told him he was out of order. Ever since his mother left me, Bilbo's been on about sex and more sex, every time he stays over. Of course, he is fourteen. I said, Eat your Wheaties. He said he'd been thinking about breasts a lot. I didn't care to know what he thought exactly. I said, Why? He said, Debate in civics class today. Resolved: Breast Feeding in Public Is an Affront to Our Municipal Morality. Bilbo was against it--the feeding, not the resolution. I told him he was breast fed in public and in private until he was three, and he's got the fourth highest grade point average at Crispus Attucks Middle School and scored in the 98th percentile on his SATs. He said, Hey, I worked for those grades. Bilbo's mom left me when I fell in love with a twenty-one-year-old student in my class. Bilbo said he wasn't against all breast feeding. He thought welfare mothers should have to breast feed, thereby saving the taxpayers millions of dollars in baby formula. He's been talking to his mother's boyfriend, Bob, a prosecuting attorney. I tell Bilbo, Why don't you let your hair grow, pierce your tongue or something.
©2002 John Dufresne
John Dufresne is the author of the novels Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, and Deep in the Shade of Paradise. He has also published The Way that Water Enters Stone, a short story collection. A recent short story of his appears on line in Blackbird. Dufresne's web-page is located at www.johndufresne.com. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University.