The Auteur with a Friend
He is lying on his bed, looking small, cute and studious, vestiges of the ice cream from his pancake still on his face. “Mum,” he says. “What does ‘semen’ mean?”
Horrified, I run back through Mason and pals’ relatively coded adventures with painted ladies but can recall nothing so explicit. “It’s another word for sperm,” I say.
“Oh,” says Z. “He’s got the clap.”
“What?!” I say.
Z says, factually, as if talking to an uncomprehending child, “This guy in the clinic has got the clap.”
So, as with any other vexed question of vocabulary, I say, “Give me the context.”
He enunciates in his best (medium) reading voice, “The white fluid resembling semen which dripped from the end…”
“Ah yes,” I say. “He has indeed.”
We are off to Laos at the crack of dawn. Time, methinks, for a nice safe topic such as Buddhism, geology or the Mekong.
I remember my dad removing a Tom Sharpe book from my hands after I asked him what ‘orgy’ meant when I was not much older than Z. As he took it, I yelled ‘No, no! I know it can mean group sex but that isn’t what is being referred to here, I just wondered if it had another meaning?’ Must check that out sometime…
Fred, on the other hand, won’t watch, read or hear of anything that has a hint of kissy, lovey or sexy stuff. He would absolutely kill, however, to hang out with a puppy like that. Too cute!
I can remember my father starting to read me a book called “Valley of the Horses” at about the age of 7 or 8. My mum walked in, and grabbed the book off him angrily. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more irritated at him. I spent years searching for that book…