The Talk
Max stood in the warm sun of a cold Saturday afternoon on the sidewalk of mid-town St. Louis. He’d just gotten out of class at the weekend college prep program he attended, where four Saturday morning hours of college math and science had been more than enough to drain his teenage mind. So there he stood, waiting for his mother to pick him up. When he saw the maroon LTD pull up next to him, relief set in. He picked his book bag up off of the ground and got into the car. As soon as he was situated in the passenger seat, his mom gunned the accelerator and the 79 Ford pulled into traffic.
“Do you love Jesus?” Max’s mom asked.
Max knew that the question meant he was in trouble. Any time his freshly born-again parents invoked the name of the savior before even asking how his day went, there was trouble. Max, who’d more or less assimilated into the religion because it made home life easier, gave the standard answer. “
Yes,” he replied.
He started mentally ticking off the list of things he could possibly be in trouble for. There was the stash of cassette tapes featuring punk, metal, and rap bands that had been deemed “evil” by their minister. There were a few pictures a friend of his had taken of herself in her underwear and given to him. There were books hidden in his closet that featured sex, violence, demons, and various other non-Christian characteristics in glorious detail and quantity. There were any number of things it could have been.
“So,” continued his mother as she lit a cigarette, “you’re a Christian right?”
“Yes.” Max knew that there was only one way to answer that question.
“Really?” She turned and looked at him, anger building. “You love Jesus? You want to follow him?”
Max thought about sheets on his bed. They should be fairly clean…right?
“What?” he finally asked his mom as she wove in and out of traffic. “If you love Jesus so much, then explain why there’s $150 worth of calls to 900 numbers on your phone bill?” she screamed.
Shit, thought Max. That was something he hadn’t expected.
For his birthday that year, his parents had given him his own phone line. When they’d done so, they were quick to point out that the number featured a parental lock that didn’t allow him to make long distance calls, or phone calls to 900 numbers. Max hadn’t really thought about that feature at all until one night about a month ago when he was reading the local alternative newspaper. In the back of that newspaper was a list of phone numbers promising hot women who were waiting to talk about whatever he wanted. More curious than anything else, he chose a number at random and dialed it.
Instead of the “This number is not available” message he’d expected, he heard “Hey baby, you’ve called America’s number one party line.” Amazed that it worked he stayed on the line. “Remember that the first minute is free and each additional minute is $4.99.”
No problem, he’d thought, I’ll just listen to the first minute to see what’s up. What followed was a pretty boring description of what he’d hear in the second minute if he held the line. After what he estimated had been a minute, he hung up feeling slightly ripped off. No big deal though, he figured other numbers would have the same policy, so he grabbed the newspaper and dialed the next number. After about an hour of dialing and hanging up, he’d gotten a pretty good description of about thirty women who were just waiting for him to hold the line for the next minute, so they could describe what they wanted to do with him. They were all eighteen year olds who were hot, wet, and waiting. They were all just a minute away. Each time, he hung up again and moved to the next number. Finally, he gave up.
His public library card had given him better descriptions of sex acts. He didn’t see why anyone would pay for one of those numbers. He put the paper away and forgot all about that night eventually. Until now. Sitting in the car, his mother fuming about Jesus and sex, he realized that he may not have hung up fast enough.
“Is that what you want?” she yelled. “Is that what turns you on? Hearing whores talk to you like that?”
“No mom,” he answered. Obviously that wasn’t totally true. But he felt it was the right answer to give. “I don’t like that at all.”
“You obviously do,” she continued, building steam. “You obviously want that. Otherwise why would you have called so many of the numbers?”
“I was,” he faltered, “curious.” “Curious? Do you think Jesus would be happy with this? Does this seem like something good Christians would do?”
“No,” answered. “We trusted you Max,” she said. “We treat you like an adult, and you turn around and do something like this…”
“I’m sorry.” Guilt set in for him. “Well, if you betrayed our trust and disregarded your religion like this, it must be what you want. ” She slammed on the brakes at a stoplight.
“No mom,” he tried to explain. “Because I can do that for you, Max.” She screamed. “I can talk like them. I can sit here and tell you how great my pussy is. I can talk about how much I like to fuck. It’ll be a hell of a lot cheaper.”
“Mom!” He wished she had just slapped him instead. Hearing those words from his mother’s mouth sent his mind into shock.
“No! It must be okay for women to talk like that. Forget about your faith,” she yelled, “it’s obviously okay to degrade them.”
On the brink of tears, Max apologized again and assured his mother that he definitely did not like such things. Finally, after all of the steam had left her, she quietly pulled over to the side of the road.
“It’s wrong, Max. You don’t treat women that way. You don’t treat sex that way,” she smoked from her cigarette.
“Yes m’am,” he answered, unable to look her in the eyes.
“You’re going to pay this phone bill.”
“Yes m’am.”
“And you’re going to church tonight,” she declared as she pulled carefully into the intersection.
“Right,” he said as he pulled at the loose threads in his jacket.
That was the only conversation about sex he’d ever had with his parents. Years later, Max recounted this story in bar to a friend. When he recalled the scene of his mother shouting lewd phrases at him, the shock was just as sobering as the day it happened. After finishing the story, his friend asked what Max’s dad had to say about it.
“Remarkably little,” answered Max as he ordered another whiskey. “He was probably just happy that all of the phone numbers featured women.”
