Orion took a deep breath. “I honestly don’t remember much. On the ride to the boat she gave me something to drink, she drank herself. I thought nothing of it. Before we got on the boat, I wasn’t able to hold my head up. A porter had to help me to my seat. I slept the entire boat ride. I remember being in a room. I woke up at some point, nude and alone. I didn’t see her until it was time for our return.”
‘That’s it’. Sarah thought, she was appalled. “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it fall, does it make a noise?”
“What kind of question is that?” Rao asked.
“If you have no memory that the marriage was consummated, was it really?”
“Paul is my son. I’m not ignorant enough not to have proof.”
“Have the two of you even saw the other naked?” Rao asked.
“I have never witnessed her. If she has me, I have no knowledge of it.”
“So as far as you have knowledge, you have never been intimate with this woman?” Sarah asked.
“Due to the fact that I have a child, I have had sex.”
“No, there are ways for her to get pregnant and it still be your child without you two having sex.”
Orion tried his best not to pass out.
Sarah finally spoke, “but having sex and being intimate are two different things.”
“Amen,” Rao agreed.
“What is stopping you from having an affair?” James asked.
Orion was about to die. “I can’t.”
“Explain.” James remarked.
He looked over at Sarah, “she (Floria) tells me all the time I am two snips away from being a girl.”
“Well as I have said before, you have never struck me as a man’s man, but there’s nothing wrong with that.” Sarah commented.
The tension in the room was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.
“It doesn’t work.” Orion finally admitted with an exasperated sigh.
“What do you mean it doesn’t work?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah,” he weakly cried, before taking a deep breath. “I haven’t had an erection in a very long time.”
“You’re kidding?” James stammered.
“Why would I lie about something like that?” Orion lowered his head.
Sarah asked, “why is the penis the center of the male universe?”
He was taken by surprise, “what?”
“If pleasing a woman is the object, there are other ways of pleasing her than the penis?”
“What pleasure is in that for man?” James asked.
“If a fully aroused partner isn’t enough to cause an erection, then you have a real medical problem. I haven’t met a man yet that the art of sex didn’t arouse.” She answered James question then turned to Orion, “What do you think the problem is?”
“I don’t have the energy.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You danced to Selira music.”
“Only briefly.”
“Well,” James snapped.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. Then buried his face.
“You should have known this wouldn’t be easy.” James told him in his normal fatherly caring voice.
“Why does it have to be so personal?”
“You don’t seem to mind getting personal when it’s someone else.” Sarah scolded him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I forgave you; though I still have the right to point out the obvious.”
“Son,” James softly spoke.
“They make medicine for that, if indeed it is a medical problem.” Sarah assured him.
“I always figured it was God’s way of punishing me.” He didn’t raise up.
“Punishing you for what?” Rao asked.
James took Rao by the elbow and they left the room. David followed.
“They’re gone.”
“Oh dear God,” Orion cried into his knees. “I can’t do this.”
“You should have known that this wouldn’t be easy.”
“I didn’t know it would be this hard.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
“No, God no,” He started sobbing.
She felt so sorry for him. In one sense all of his dignity had been stripped away. The ultimate humiliation was to have it stripped away by his parents. She didn’t know what to do, other than to hold him while he cried.
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