Page 45 of Cockpit
“But there were a lot of women there. Did you not like any of their vaginas?”
If I had been drinking water, I would have accidentally just spit it all over the bed. “What?” I cough out the word as I push him away from me. No doubt I must have a crazy expression on my face as I try to control my laughter. “Did I what?” I finally manage.
“Their vaginas.” He says it so very casually, and I know I’ve gone so very wrong somewhere in the equation. “Did you not like them?”
I must open and close my mouth ten times as I follow his eight-year-old train of thought. “Where did you hear that?”
“At school, Sam said that when men like a woman’s vagina, they marry them.” Stupid Sam Hamner and his parents who don’t filter anything from him.
Jesus Christ. I didn’t have a dry mouth a minute ago, but it feels like I just swallowed a bag of cotton balls.
“Do you know what a vagina is?” I finally utter the word. I must turn a thousand shades of red when I do.
He tries to lean back so he can see me, but shit, I can’t look him in the eyes or he’s going to see right through me.
I can tell a woman her pussy feels like heaven. I can dirty talk with the best of them (or so I’ve been told). But having to ask my son if he knows what a vagina is makes me feel like I’m sixteen and fumbling in the dark as I try to figure out what exactly to do with one.
“I heard Sam at school saying women have vaginas and that’s why men marry them.”
“He’s right, girls have vaginas. But a man marries a woman because he loves her and trusts her . . . not because she has a vagina.”
“What does it do?”
I blink several times and realize this is a serious detriment to raising a kid on your own. You think you have it handled and then, wham, you realize you neglected a serious part of it.
“Well, just like boys have penises, girls have vaginas.” Let that be enough of a response that it ends this conversation.
“How are they different? What do they do with them? What are they for?” He leans back and looks me dead in the eyes, innocence shrouded in curiosity.
I clear my throat. And lie. “They are different because boys and girls have to have different parts for the different things they need them for later in life.”
Brilliant explanation, Gray.
I could win parent of the year with that comment.
“Like what kind of different things?”
“Just different things.”
“Huh. Cool,” he says as if I made perfect sense. “Is there an innie or an outie?”
Another sputtering cough from me. “What?”
“Like belly buttons. Some kids have an innie and others have an outie. Do penises and vaginas have innies and outies?”
“Yep. Sure do.”
He angles his head and stares at me for a beat. I can see his mind turning this over, and I swear I’ve said the word vagina more times in this five-minute conversation than I have in years. I should be good for another five.
“Cool.” He shrugs and climbs off the bed.
“Cool?”
“Yep. To the Death Star!” he shouts and takes off down the hallway.
That’s the best part about kids. Their curiosity goes just as quickly as it comes, and they are satisfied with half-truths all parents feel relieved getting away with.
My phone alerts me to a text. It sounds off somewhere in the room, and it takes me a moment to find it on the floor in the back pocket of the pants I had on last night.
