Written by Terrestris Veritas (Terra)

Staring up into the darkness a thought entered my head.“Do you ever think that like, ‘darkness’ is just another way of saying, ‘no light’?” I asked my sleepy mate.

I heard him prop himself up onto his elbow. “No shit Sherlock,” came the answer.

“Well,” I responded, “I’m no Sherlock alright but when people say ‘absence of light’, they mean darkness. Do you not think it strange that people don’t say ‘absence of darkness’ when they mean light?”

“If you keep talking there will be an absence of light in your head until there’s an absence of darkness on this side of the Earth! Happy?”

“Yes.” I giggled to myself.

“Good. Shut up.” Matt snuggled himself down into his over-sized duvet.

As I was bobbing my head to some imaginary music, I thought of something else. Sitting up, I voiced my concern. “Hey. Did you ever think that, like, when-”

“I don’t think I was very clear earlier,” Matt interrupted. “Fuck off with your speculations. Please.”

“No, no, listen to this one. You’ll like it,” I smiled slyly. “So, when you, like, haven’t had sex before, you’re known as a virgin, yes?”

“Yes…”

“What are you called after you have had sex?” I grinned.

Silence occurred for a moment. Matt mumbled something.“What was that?” I asked innocently.

“I don’t know…that’s a very good question.”

“Cool.” My grin grew even more – he called me stupid.

“Lets Google it.” Matt got up.

“Internet is just loading.” I already had the laptop fired up.

GOOGLE SEARCH: _

“Ok,” Matt said. “Type in ‘what called after sex’.

“Sure thing.” I replied.

GOOGLE SEARCH: what called after sex_

“And…enter.” I pressed the enter key and the results rolled up.

“Oh,” Matt said and pointed at a link. “This question was asked on Yahoo. Let’s see the answers.”

I clicked the link. There were only three answers.

Matt read out the first one. “This one says ‘Whore/Player’.”

“That is so inaccurate,” I complained. “One becomes a whore or player when they have sex eight or more times a week.”

Matt smacked me across the head. “It was a smart-ass answer, smart-ass.”

“Whatever,” I shrugged.  “The next one says ‘STD Carrier’.”

“American,” said Matt.

“Oh well, we all have problems.” I looked at Matt.

“Yeah.” Matt agreed, looking at me. “Only some more than others.”

We both shifted our gaze above to where my parents were sleeping, and said in unison, “indeed.”

Turning our attention back to the monitor we read the final answer and expressed our reactions.

“What. The. Fuck?” Matt said in disbelief.

“That makes strange sense.” I said slowly.

We packed away the laptop and settled back down to sleep. After a time, I sat back up frowning and looked over to where Matt lay.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “My mammy and daddy are ‘lollipops’?”

“Yep.” Matt replied.

“Hmm, being a virgin sounds much less gay.”

Matt sighed. “Yep.”

I flopped back down onto my pillow and stared into the absence of light. I spoke my mind once more.

“Fucking hell.”

“Yep.”