The following week I was sitting on the back porch when she opened the gate and went to the blue barrel. I greeted her, startling her, and she greeted me back. I asked her what she would like to see. When she feigned ignorance at first, gave in, and said that she would like to see more pictures.
“What kind?” I asked. “Yurenka, sex is millions of years old for humans and hundreds of millions of years old for animals. There is nothing new, except to young people like you. Sex is great, necessary, fun and part of life for everyone. Now would you like to see pictures of masturbation, intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, what?”
She just stared at me, then at the ground.
I said, “I'll tell you what. Next week you bring back the pictures you have and circle the ones you want to see more of. Put it in the gray trashcan. I'll get it and give you more pictures of those types.”
She said, quietly, “I have it with me.”
I took a pen out of my shirt pocket, laid it on the porch near where she was standing, and said, “If you decide you want to talk to someone about sex, Yurenka, and you can't talk to your parents, you can talk to me. Kids your age have the weirdest ideas about sex and they usually think that adults don't know much about sex. We all do. We were teens once, too. We had questions and wrong ideas. The lucky ones had someone they could talk to and trust. The unlucky ones got half of the story, half of that story was wrong, and they are still trying to figure out what went wrong with their lives. Of course, none of them will admit that. And that is the ultimate stupidity. Not knowing about their own sex, or the opposite sex, or about making love. So if you want to talk to someone, I promise you I will never lie to you.”
I turned and went into the house.
When they left, the paper was in the gray barrel. There were four circles. One around each of the masturbation pictures. One around the teen holding the older man's cock. And one around the whole paper. As they say, “In for a penny, in for a pound,” whoever the hell they are.