the lover’s lost and found

Both his father and grandfather agree that his generation had been cheated. With the advent of internet porn, any innocence or mystery about sex had been stolen from them.

Nowhere was this more apparent than when his generation was ‘losing it.’

What exactly was it? What had they lost?

And the question that now burned within him; how do they get it back?

For himself, he knew where to start looking; the lover’s lost and found.

He remembers the moments leading up to his losing it. He had consumed so much porn that there was none of the precious naiveté about the act that previous generations had gone into it with. In fact, the only reason he was nervous was he wasn’t sure if she would expect him to lick her asshole.

Up until that point he’d never had a pleasant experience with anything related to the asshole. How much can you truly know about your partner’s attitudes toward hygiene?

His father and grandfather would have laughed themselves sick if he would have shared that bit of information. His grandfather had told him his biggest fear was if the stories of the vagina having teeth turned out to be true.

There was something at the lover’s lost and found that was his and he wanted it back.

He knew it couldn’t be found on either coast. It would definitely be somewhere in the Midwest. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” echoed in his head so he settled on Kansas.

He was also certain you couldn’t arrive there via plane. There were certainly no paths that led to the lover’s lost and found that began at an airport.

He would have to go by bus.

So he did.

It was quite a long journey and it gave him plenty of time to wrestle with the question of what it was. The thing you lost when you lost it. He thought about asking some of the other passengers but he knew their answer would vary too wildly to be helpful.

Although he’d tried to forget all the details of first sexual encounter, one thought fought its way back into his head. The tension he’d felt as he wondered if he was supposed to finish on her face.

When he arrived in Kansas he knew strolled right by the rental car counter because he couldn’t arrive at the lover’s lost and found in a car. It was a place that was only accessible by bike.

And not one of those high-tech fiberglass numbers, or whatever the hell the made those sport bikes out of these days. It would have to be an old-fashioned bike.

So he walked to nearby K-Mart and bought one.

After a hot dog and a Coke he set out. Peddling away from town in no particular direction, humming songs to himself and feeling a sense of optimism that he hadn’t felt in quite awhile.

The road under his tires went from asphalt to dirt and soon he was in the country. He regretted not buying a bell for his bike because he felt like ringing the shit out of one as he rode.

Soon there were nothing but farm houses scattered in front of him, with long intervals of nothing in between. In front of one of these there was a girl hanging laundry on a line.

She had strawberry blonde hair and wore a sundress that whipped around in the wind as if doing a Jitterbug on her lean frame.

She saw him and smiled. She waved.

He smiled and waved back.

Then he made a wide turn on the bike and headed back in the direction he’d come, riding through the dust he’d created. He knew he’d found it, and while he regretted not buying a bell for the bike he had no such remorse about not adding a basket to hang in the front. He understood at that moment that what he’d retrieved wasn’t something you could put in a basket.

He boarded the bus home (“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”) and took his seat and thought about the girl the whole ride back.

About her strawberry hair and her smile and especially about the dancing sundress.

Moments after seeing the boy turn his bike around and pedal away, the girl in the sundress walked into her house. “Hey mom,” she bellowed up the stairs, “I think I helped another one.”

“That’s nice” came the reply.

Then the girl went into her room and took some more pictures for her OnlyFans page.