"You noticed he didn't sport a boner? Must be a cool lad, or would it be nerves as we, the parents, are present?"
He changed the subject and spoke aloud as Harry entered the room again.
"Heather, this young man tells me I should ask you if you've been intimate with someone, anyone, and you will answer me honestly. So go ahead."
Heather was as unprepared for a request like that as Harry had been at the front door. Still, she didn't stammer. Of course it helped that her conscience was clear.
"I've not been intimate with anyone. Not intimate in the sense of your definition of being intimate with someone. The most intimate I got with a guy was a peck on the cheek to congratulate me with my birthday last winter. Being pecked on the cheek with a group of your friends watching sure doesn't feel intimate, as intimacy is something you share with just one other person. The whole group giving me a peck on the cheek on the same occasion didn't make it more intimate either. My best friend, Gini, telling me about her secret love for a boy I know, is much more intimate. Or Harry putting an arm around me when I felt I was going to blow another history test, to assure me I would do better, even well, the next test and that it isn't my fault I have been bad at history as Mrs. Norris is a bad history teacher. Taking me with him to his grandfather to listen to him telling about history as history should be told even felt intimate as he took me to his private world beyond school. But you don't consider that intimate. For you, intimacy only starts when you reach third base on a date."
"Tell me about the arm around. What was the hand doing?"
"Just holding me... At my waist on the other side from where he sat beside me. His hand only on the outside of my clothes. He pulled me to him each time I started to sob, making me feel safe, protected by the arm around me, a strong arm and a strong hand and a strong chest he was pulling me into. Making me feel home in the warmth of his body near to me. Why do you want to know? Intimacy with someone to you is just fucking that person."
"Fucking someone is being very intimate with someone," Bob agreed with her, but then denied it was just that. "But just fucking, without feeling an arm or a leg around you, without the body warmth of the person you're with, that isn't being intimate, that's just fucking. Fucking yourself with a dildo isn't intimate at all if you don't use your imagination and fantasize a real person is there with you, the dildo being the dick of the boy you fancy or being held by the lesbian girlfriend who wants to pleasure you so much you will feel your soul shake when you come."
Harry felt embarrassed having to witness this conversation. His parents had given him their own version of Sex Ed, which he thought had been a lot better than the sex education at school years later, but it never was as graphic as this. His parents would never tell him something this sexual when a friend from school was visiting, not even in less graphic words. He was shocked when Heather answered her dad.
"If you really think that's intimate. Yes, I've been intimate with a vibrator. Mom's smallest vibrator... I've cleaned it thoroughly afterward, Mom... as I was curious how it would feel. I tried to fantasize it was a real guy's slong, but I know real penises don't vibrate. I tried it with the buzzer off, just sliding it in and out of my punany, but I couldn't get myself off just sliding the thing in and out. I had to finger myself frantically with my other hand or, better still, use my fingers and the buzzer both. I never saw Harry's wiener and I never have felt it up, even not from outside his pants, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't look like or feel like Mom's vibrators. Using all my imagination to make a fantasy in which the vibrator is Harry's wiener, won't change that. Are you satisfied now I confessed I tried to be intimate with Harry in a fantasy and with a made-up stiffy?"
During the last words she looked Bob piercingly in the eyes. As she finished she cast a glance at Harry, but then looked away quickly, suddenly blushing crimson.
"You don't have to apologize for using my vibrators," Barbara said, as Bob apparently had stopped the cross examination. "If my mother had possessed sex toys, I'm sure I would have used them too. It's not easy for a teenage girl to go to the shop and ask for that kind of stuff. So feel free and try the others too. I've a nice little dildo too, that looks like a boy's stiffy. It fits nicely in my arse and Bob likes to put it in there when we fuck and pretend we're having a threesome with another guy doing a DP."
Harry also looked away blushing at the ease with which Heather's mother talked about things like that to Heather with a stranger like himself in the room.
"Thanks for the offer, Mom, but I don't think I will take you up on it. If you could live without them when you were a teenager and Grandma didn't possess them, I for sure can live without them. And thanks, Dad, for making me tell those things. I don't think you ever confessed to your first girlfriend even before you two were an item, that you masturbated fantasizing over her. And I'm pretty sure Grandpa didn't make you confess in the presence of the girl." Heather's words had been bitter, not angry, 'bitter and sad,' you could say.
"I'm sorry, girl," Bob offered. He had not asked further as he had become conscious himself -while Heather told him about using her mother's vibrator while thinking of Harry- how humiliating it had to be for her with the guy listening too. She was right he had made her tell.
"I'm really sorry," he repeated, "I'll make it up to you as soon as you're no longer grounded. For now I have some consolation though. That lad Harry is a good lad. He will never bully you for your confession. Probably won't even tease you with it. Surely won't tell anybody. So, go do your homework together and just forget about it."
Neither Harry nor Heather thought it was possible that they'd forget about it, but they sat down at the table to do the homework.
"I'm sorry too," Harry said in a low voice leaning over to Heather, "But your father is right I won't bully you and won't tell anyone." He had his schoolbag on the table to get some papers out, but turned back to Heather as she suddenly sobbed. In a reflex he put his arm around her and soothed her with a soft voice.
"You don't have to cry. It's only words... But I am glad you thought of me... when doing that. I've been thinking a lot about you lately... when I touch myself... Please, don't cry. It's not easy having parents, I know... But be glad they don't neglect you."
Heather didn't really cry, she just sobbed. More forceful so as Harry did his confession that was meant as consolation. He pulled her in more tight to calm her down and looked over his shoulder to her parents to fight off their gaze and prevent them from saying anything about it or, even worse, come over and try and calm Heather down. They didn't. On their faces was just regret on what they had done to their daughter. As Barbara saw Harry looking at her a vague smile and a little nod of her head seemed to encourage him to keep on consoling Heather. As he turned his face back to Heather's he paused in midway to nuzzle her ear. All this happened while Harry was softly speaking. During his last two phrases Heather's sobbing calmed down.
"Thanks" she said turning to face him. Her head turned further to cast a glance on her parents. They couldn't be sure if the expression on her face was accusing or challenging, but as she turned back they were sure the peck she gave Harry on the cheek was grateful and lovingly. With that Heather and Harry had repeated all the real intimacies they had shared and she had confessed to her father. It felt less intimate with her parents watching, but it was more intimate because this time they were stark naked. Her parents just sat in silence while Harry and Heather took to work. She said she had read all they were supposed to read in the afternoon and she had tried not to hear Mrs. Norris' boring voice as she did so, but Harry's grandfather's enthusiastic one instead. It had made reading a lot less boring, even interesting. When he came in she had been reading for a second time, trying to think of what parts of the text would have made grandfather curious to learn more from other sources and what interesting coherences there were between the events that had been covered in this part of the book and parts they had read before. Harry filled her in with the things his grandfather had added to the textbook that afternoon as he visited him. It had been contagious as Harry spoke as passionate as his grandfather when telling about historic events.
Only one of Heather's parents interrupted, Barbara, but only to bring them something to drink. After that it became a game of asking each other like a quiz, but two ways and discussing where they had different views. To Harry it was strange Heather kept forgetting the years, not just because Mrs. Norris was so keen on them, but even more while she was good at mathematics, even helping him doing his algebra homework. "If you're not sure of a year at the test write something like it was in the second term of president James Medison, like you told me not just to write down the answers in algebra but also the calculations that let to them. Years is just places in history, and as you are better than me naming the president's names and in the right order, their governments are in a way places in history too. When you can add which president came next..."
"The other James. Monroe."
"... or an event just before and just after the thing happened of which she asks the year, she should give you points for it...
Were there just two James' president?"
"No, there was also James Knox Polk, but that's the... uh, sixth after Monroe... and James Abram Garfield much later, at the end of the century, and Jimmy Carter was officially James Earl Carter, but that was almost another century further in time."
