Back seat of a car

Once the car is no longer a refuge or location of last resort, it's a lot more fun than you'd expect.

Then again, the replacement of anxious teen fumbling with more experienced, hedonistic shagging probably improved the experience a lot, too.

Just once, after work. Midnight, exhausted, but we didn't want to leave each other. Our houses too far apart, nothing open in the middle of the night, we sat in my car in the parking lot, his impossible legs folded up like a grasshopper's. It was chilly outside; it made us not want to touch the windows.

The upholstery in the back seat of our Bonneville was grey-white (perhaps simply dingy from age) with odd black stripes - going both ways - and they crisscrossed to form boxes at certain intervals. The world was so flat on long car trips to my father's hometown that I tired of looking out the window; I ran my pinky nail in the plush and drew stars and patterns. I restarted a hundred times cuz I couldn't get the symmetry right. Everyone once in awhile my mother and father, up in the front seat would exchange glances I assumed were meaningful. I also assumed I would understand them myself when I got older.