Château Éboule (English)

quatre

June 11, 2016

Dear Larry,

Have I told you how great masturbation is? It's like, why have I never discovered this before! It's almost as if I've spent so much time making sure I'm the small, sweater-wearing, quiet, sitting boy whom no one suspects anything of that I missed out the true silver lining to life.

In case you didn't notice, the silver lining to life is masturbation.

And I don't really know what you'd almost say, because you're not a real person, are you? But I guess it would almost be like this: masturbation's all fun and games until you get severe genital herpes. Well, looks like joke's one you, because you can't get genital herpes unless you actually have sex with someone, and I don't plan on doing that for another ten years.

That was wrong though. I just searched it up and it seems herpes can be passed through any bodily fluid leaving your body and entering another's, vice versa. (Château Aider has Wi-Fi! Which means convenient input on genital herpes and I don't have to try and picture a woman in my mind: the internet does that for me.)

I really, really don't know why I'm telling you this, and I'm absolutely sure I've never used so many exclamation marks in my life. New bodily concepts deserve new writing habits, right? Quick, write that one down.

Incidentally, there was an actual fire in the third cottage - the one where Mike's family, the Lawrences, is staying at. Angela said it was because Hillary and Thomas were having "romantic-revival sex", as prescribed by their counsellor, and the rice on the stove burned. It was sushi night that night.

The Lawrences didn't have any sushi.

They now have two rooms in a hostel in the town until the cottage is renovated. One room for the mum and one for the dad, the pot-addicted kids split unevenly between the two. Angela was acting all depressed at the dinner table that same night, and our dad started going on about how boys aren't worth taking Angela's happiness, and that started another dinner-table row, which resulted in our mum storming out, cursing at the top of her lungs about ungrateful children and bastard fathers, and moments later I followed her, the noise too much for my ears, or maybe too alien for my ears. My fat dad and my bratty teenage sister rarely yelled at each other in this format: it was always my thin mum and my bratty teenage sister.

I stepped out onto the back porch because I wanted to see the starry night and the papery silhouettes of trees close enough to reach out and touch. The voices from Angela and my dad were muffled in the slightest possible form, but it was one step better than being in the thick of things and that was okay. But the moment I stepped out onto that same back porch I stepped out on a couple nights previously and closed the creaking door behind me, my nostrils filled with the sharp scent of smoke and I looked around for the source of the fire - perhaps the Lawrences were back and having more romantic-revival sex.

But no, it was my mum, and she was sitting on the step. Though her hand fleetingly reached out and waved around in the air, dispersing the smoke, it sat there like a misty halo, and she alas saw no point in hiding the cigarette beside her frail thigh. It seemed, I thought, that there was no secret my mother couldn't pry apart.

"Nathan?" She said, and I was caught off guard when her voice sounded small and high - guilty. She looked at me in a sad way, a way she had never looked at me before. It was almost as if it was the first time my mum had ever looked at me. "Have a seat."

She patted the spot on the step beside her, and I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands as I took a step and sat down, the smoke making me feel dizzy, disgusted in the pit of my stomach that my mother would allow me to see this side of her. She drew in the cigarette and blew out a gust of smoke.