The boy gave a full hearty laugh. "Do you always keep things in there like that?" He was careful about his words and glanced around the sidewalk. The boy did not understand him and said nothing. "What do I do with these things?" "Give them to your son." "I don't have one." "When you have one" "I won't have one," he mumbled evasively. He opened the door and they went in. Seated together, they consumed contraband chocolate peanut butter cups and cola that the man pulled out of his bag. The man told himself that the boy was like a nephew. He did this to allay guilt that was burdening his positive self-image and so that he might restrain himself from a touch that could cause him to lose his prey so soon. His hormones boiled and steamed like the rolling levity of atoms and yet he did not reach for the succulent young flesh there beside him. The boy told himself that the stranger was like an uncle for there was a dull aching within him of one needing to believe that somewhere he would find a man's interest in him -- one who would take him to baseball games and whom he could confide in, one who could teach him how to become a man. When the movie ended the man said he had a better film in his apartment and they went away together to his furtive domain. On his sofa bed, which had not been pushed back into a sofa, they were propped up on pillows. They were half sitting and half lying on a bed watching a movie and eating grilled cheese sandwiches and potato chips. Somewhere into the video was a car chase. Apoplectic expletives of the driver being chased--words that were part of the lexicon of American culture but ones to which he did not understand fully — puzzled and intrigued him. He was eager to know jargon that he assumed was linked to this thing called sex (whatever it was) and abbreviations like S&M and MF that were stranger yet. The ideas within these abbreviations were so hidden there that he got a sense that they were the conduit for experiencing great things. He felt that by cogitating all of these mysterious words and abbreviations long enough he would be able to transcribe them as if the English that was chiseled on the walls of his brain were a Rosetta stone. As he was pondering this Morse code of the adult cabal, there was a feeling of a hand under his buttocks -- a hand that then passed through the border of the elasticity of his underwear to direct contact with his flesh. Nonplussed, he turned to the trespasser and saw for the first time an erection that seemed such a freakish abnormality (here it was poking out of jogging pants that had been slid down to his hips). Even more fey was that mesmerized and fixated look of yearning for absolute pleasure on the face of this stranger called Tom. Nathaniel removed the hand. " What are you doing?" " Can you help me? Pull down your underwear. " "Why?"