"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone you came here to my apartment—you won't get punished if only you help me a little. Put your mouth on it or let me enter." "Enter?" "Your butt hole." He asked himself it this was sex. He had assumed that it was a moonstruck look and a bewitched yearning of adult lunatics for kisses from the opposite sex. He wanted to scream, "No!" and to whine that he wanted to go home. He was hurting and feeling diminished in years and he wanted to cry. He was scared despite his interest in how this freakish penis augmentation was linked to sex. He wished that he had never been so foolish as to come here or even gone to the movie theatre with this stranger. And yet he tried to hold onto his senses. He realized that to oppose a man trying to get his fix of exhilaration might be risky. He tried to figure out the most innocuous or least deleterious path that his childish mind could concoct. It was mostly a feeling since he was not all that logical. He remembered that mesmerized and fixated look of yearning for absolute pleasure on the face of this stranger. It was proof that although sex was linked to another person, it was mostly an internal function. To disengage himself and yet fulfill his curiosity, he returned one of the stranger's hands on his buttocks and placed the other long hand onto the stranger himself. Then he watched the stroking and pumping that lead to a whitish disgorging. With its passing the stranger went into the bathroom to urinate. A few seconds later, Nathaniel quietly exited the apartment for the first city bus he was able to descry. He kept wistfully hoping for his mother's return. He missed her. With all windows open and at top legal speed, the wind dishevels his hair .His sunglasses are so dark that they make the day into dusk. His car is strewn with myriad CDs but he repeats the same song from one that belongs to his mother. He sings along with Led Zepplin. "I've made up my mind to make a new start./ I'm going to California with an aching in my heart./ Someone told me there is a girl out there/ with love in her eyes and flowers in her ha-ir./ La la la la/ I took my chances on a big jet plane./ Never let them tell you that they are a-l-l the same." He beats the steering wheel to the remainder of the tune until he glances at the gauge and decides to pull into the next gas station that he encounters . He has to laugh and that laugh comes out in a bitter and cyical drool. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. His California girl lives in Sante Fe, New Mexico where her husband recently divorced her. She isn't a girl but a woman who last week, after recuperating from her face lift, emailed a photograph of her new face. She is just Hispanic Betty but he doesn't mind. Older women are more appealing to him and this one has always cared about him. He will use whatever she has to give to him. He has no compunction. Chapter Thirty