His mother teaches him, and where it leads him takes everyone totally by surprise
As they had most Saturdays Kyle Parker and his mother, Laura, pounded nails on a Habitat for Humanity building site. There were a few regulars who showed up every week, but there was also a steady turnover of new faces that showed up for a weekend or two. Professionals worked during the week, but the site swarmed with volunteers every weekend, doing most of the grunt work that didn't need a professional, except for guidance.
Kyle enjoyed installing roofing shingles, but, while Laura had no problem with scaling ladders, she preferred to leave walking on the pitched roofs to others. Other jobs such as framing and painting they did together. All in all it was a good bonding experience swinging hammers.
Sometimes they worked on teardown jobs, dismantling a building being demolished, to salvage useable building materials, and Laura was handy with a crowbar as well as a hammer.
They had worked together on Habitat projects for a couple of years, and their decorated hard hats were easy to spot on the job sites. Laura had suggested they take up something physical in order to work out certain aggressions and frustrations.
After marriage right out of high school Kyle's father, Stan, had left Laura and Kyle when the boy was only eleven years old, running off with a woman barely in her twenties. Stan had met her at a restaurant he ate lunch at nearly every day, starting with flirting but soon moving into having conversations. He also met her regularly when he 'worked late.' After a few months he decided to leave his family for 'greener pastures.' Laura suspected it was for the excitement of young sex, as he had always had an eye for young ladies.
After a few years of asking herself 'why?' Laura felt that it was time to take up something physical. Her father had taught her how to do basic home repairs, and she could sling a hammer as good as any man. She found out about Habitat for Humanity and decided that would be a good outlet. She envisioned every nail having the head of Stan and took delight in pounding them hard. Most female volunteers took at least ten to fifteen hits on a nail to drive it in, but Laura did it in three or four hard whacks. She didn't bend many, either.
When Kyle was a junior in high school he began to join her. Abandonment by his father had left him bitter and Laura convinced him that pounding nails while helping to create something for a needy family was a useful outlet. The sweat and physical nail pounding relieved a lot of what the past had dealt him.
It wasn't long before Kyle discovered the truth in it. While he still held anger toward his father, he was mostly over the hurt.
After high school Kyle went to nearby Summerville College, but stayed at home to save money and didn't make an effort to socialize much with the other students - just go to class, come home, work on assignments, read or watch TV go to bed. On weekends he still went with Laura to do Habitat work. Over the summer he had a part time job at a local non-profit.
The weekend after classes ended they had come home, tired, after a day of framing walls. Kyle figured that as long as he was sweaty he would go ahead and cut the lawn. The lawnmower, often balky, had started right up and the job was done in a minimum amount of time.
He went to his room, stripped off his sweaty clothes and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist. When he found the bathroom door open he strode in but froze in place. Laura was just exiting the shower, stepping out and reaching for a towel. The unexpected encounter took her by surprise as well.
"Uh...uh...uh...I'm sorry. I didn't know you were still in here. The door was open."
Laura paused before picking up her towel to dry off. "I left it open so the mirror wouldn't get steamed up. I thought you'd be longer with the lawn."
"Oh, right. I should have knocked anyway," he said as he regained his composure and turned on his heel to leave. "I...I...I... better leave. Sorry, sorry sorry."
"Just give me a minute and you can have it," she called after him. It was a hazard that came with living in a two bedroom one bath house.
Several minutes later she poked her head into his room. "It's free now."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's okay sweetie. I guess it's not like you haven't seen a female body before. Mine's no different than the girls at school - except their skin is probably a bit tighter," she laughed.
"Ummm...uh...I guess."
She gave him a serious look. "What do you mean 'you guess'? I'm sensing something here."
His mother sat down next to him on the bed, with a furrowed brow. "What do you mean by that? You've had ample opportunity to um...study...such things, if you know what I mean. You're in college."
He looked at her. "Have I ever really had a date that you know of?"
"Of course. There was Mary Ellen in high school. I don't know about at Summerville. You haven't told me about anyone."
"Yeah. Mary Ellen and I hung out a few times. There's been nothing at school."
"What's the matter, Kyle? You'll be a sophomore in the fall. You need to get out and socialize."
Kyle snorted a laugh. "Yeah. I see that happening."
"I don't understand why. Every time I ask you about it you shrug me off. I'm trying to help you here."
"It's not going to happen because I'm a dork. I hang out with dork friends. I don't even know how to treat a girl or what to do whenI'm with them. I certainly haven't seen one without clothes before. All I've ever seen is on the computer screen."
She considered what to say. "I believe you know more than you think. I couldn't help seeing how your towel changed shape."
Kyle turned red and looked away.
"Honey, that's normal."
"Normal? There's nothing normal about me."
"You are a handsome young man. You need to get some confidence in yourself."
He turned to her. "It's like...in order to get confidence around girls you have to have confidence to begin with." He put his head in his hands and whispered "I haven't even really kissed a girl. I mean a real kiss. I sort of did with Mary Ellen, I mostly kissed her on the cheek, but we tried some lip kissing, too. It all was rather awkward and didn't go particularly well."
"This is a revelation to me. Why didn't you confide in me? Here I felt you knew you could talk to me about anything."
"But not about sex and stuff."
"Okay. It seems you're getting embarrassed. Turn your head so you're not looking at me."
He gave her a quizzical look, but turned away.
"Now that you're not looking at me, let me ask you something. You've never had sex, is that what I understand?"
Kyle nodded.
"You're twenty years old. I know you have urges. What do you do about them if you don't have sex with girls?"
"I...uh...I mean I..."
"Masturbate?"
Kyle turned crimson. "Yeah."
"Good. You gave a truthful answer. I do the laundry around here, after all."
