Learning Self Interest

CHAPTER 1

"Are you sexually active?"

I stared awkwardly at Dr. Lithgow's graying roots.

"See, I don't really ever know how to answer that."

Dr. Lithgow stared back at me over her Gucci reading glasses, seeming to expect me to answer my own question.

"Do you mean like, am I currently having regular sex with someone? Have I ever had sex? Or have I ever had any sexual-related encounter, like including oral?"

Now she was glaring at me. Clicking her anagrammed pen and pursing her perfectly rose-tinted lips, I could tell my presence was just one patient too much for her today.

"I mean have you ever had sex. And if you have, what was the most recent date of the encounter."

Seeing as how Dr. Lithgow was now posing questions as statements, I figured I should stop avoiding the drive home with mom by pretending I was funny.

"No, I've never had sex."

With a knowing nod that I had indeed wasted her time, I was quickly excused to see myself out.

Driving home I tried to remember my life back in Cincinnati. How a filling meal at any restaurant was three times less as it was in this strange suburb of Massachusetts. How school was gloriously simple to navigate and how all of my favorite bands performed at the same coffee shop every Friday night. In contrast I found this town so...bleak. Recreational activities were abundantly non-existent and I found that mom was sighing much more often than usual.

Our house was nestled in the neighborhood lovingly nicknamed by the kids at school as "ew, don't go there." Mom and I had gotten into routines of taking out the trash and sharing the remote but life overall ceased to amaze. I kept insisting mom go out on a date with one of her teacher colleagues who hit on her at the Middle School but she insisted back that "just because she was a teacher, didn't mean she wanted to be involved with one".

I hung out mostly with the theater kids because they were the most unabashed about putting all their weirdness out there. At lunch they'd argue about casting choices and how acting was considered gay and wrestling wasn't. In between classes they would glide through the hallways with loud renditions of "Mama Mia" and "Seasons of Love" accapella style as I mutely bobbed my head along. They were entertaining certainly, but still underwhelmingly predictable. No one at the school interested me on a deep level. There was that one exceptionally well dressed French kid in my Economics class. He always arrived curiously 17 minutes late and aced every test without handing in a single assignment. But he didn't even speak English. Although perhaps that's why I found him so interesting.