Right before I graduated high school, my mom walked into my room while I was drawing and asked me if I was sexually active.
My mom never bugs me while I’m drawing, which is a lot.
If she has a question she usually asks it during dinner.
But she walked into my room.
Josh, are you sexually active?
It was weird.
She saw something online about the percentage of kids my age that are sexually active.
I told her no, which was the truth, and I thought she would be happy.
She just said “Ok,” and walked away.
That was weird too.
My mom is sicker than she admits.
I’m an only child.
I thought about it all day at school. Maybe she wants a grandchild before she dies.
I’m quiet. Girls don’t really like me, I guess. I’m not sure, but anyway, I’m not sexually active.
That weekend I went to the riverfront to draw a freighter for my final art project.
The assignment was that the drawing must be photorealistic and must show motion.
It was a gloomy, drizzly day, but a family was barbecuing in the little gazebo by the Merchant Marine Memorial Anchor. I drew the anchor freshman year. Got an A.
I planned to draw the freighter and to exhibit motion, draw the wake it made.
I could just take photos of the freighter and draw in my room, but that didn’t seem as fun. Especially if my mom was going to ask questions about sex.
The freighters weren’t on that part of the river yet, but I drew the overcast and the outline of the Windsor skyline. I had the freighter schedule bookmarked on my phone.
A woman with a cart walked by the family in the gazebo. She grunted. The kids gave her some returnable pop cans. She grunted again and pushed her cart toward me.
I didn’t have any returnables to give her. I had one ten-dollar bill that I wasn’t going to give her. Before the woman got to me she stopped and sat down next to her cart.
In the cart, there were a few garbage bags, some dirty clothes, a piece of aluminum pipe, and a really old-looking, sunbleached box of Ritz crackers that couldn’t possibly have crackers in it, at least not the ones that came in that box originally.
The woman had a St. Edwards Track and Field hoodie on and loose satiny green St. Edwards shorts.
I was almost certain she hadn’t gone to St. Edwards. St. Edwards was all really rich white kids from the eastern suburbs.
I finished my clouds and filled in some detail on the skyline.
The woman belched and I looked over.
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