Men, Women & Children: A Novel

by Chad Kultgen

  Patricia’s excitement to hear a knock at her door was quelled when she opened it to find the Papa John’s delivery man. Patricia paid for the pizzas and Liz helped her set them out on the kitchen table along with the pies and two two-liter bottles of Diet Coke. As they finished preparing the refreshments, the next actual guest arrived.

  Kent Mooney had no idea what to expect when he’d decided to attend this meeting, but he thought it might give him some insight into why his son, Tim, wanted to play online video games instead of football. With his wife gone for more than four months at that point, he had also begun to think about dating again. He knew he wasn’t fully ready to do it. When he and his wife, Lydia, had been separated, but still lived in the same town, he never saw a need to consider other women. Now that she’d been living in another state for four months, he began to realize that at some point he would need to put himself back out in the world and interact with women again. He thought that this PATI meeting might be a decent place for him to practice, to at least talk to a woman in a social setting.

  After Kent introduced himself, Patricia said, “Well, it’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for coming, and we’ll make you feel just as welcome as we can for your first meeting. There’s some pizza and pie in the kitchen. Help yourself, and we’ll start just as soon as a few more people get here. Should be in the next ten minutes or so.”

  Kent went to the kitchen and immediately questioned his decision to attend his first PATI meeting. He wondered if he would actually gain any knowledge about his son, anything that could help him get Tim to play football again. He felt certain, after meeting Patricia and Liz, that this meeting would not yield any valuable interactions with the opposite sex. He began to convince himself that he should leave, faking an urgent phone call or something similar. He concocted a plan to walk back into the living room, start a conversation with Patricia about online video games, pretend that his phone was vibrating, answer it, act surprised and concerned, and then say, “Okay, I’m leaving right now. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” flipping his phone shut and apologizing profusely for having to leave while explaining that an emergency at home was forcing him to go before the meeting started.

  As Kent came into the living room, Patricia was answering the door, and as she opened it, Kent saw Dawn Clint for the first time and decided that maybe he should stay at the meeting after all.

  Although Dawn considered herself Internet-savvy, especially since she’d started running her daughter’s website, she had become increasingly concerned about one of the members on that website who had begun to request photos of her daughter that were of an increasingly pornographic nature. She was worried that, by even reading the e-mails, she might be creating some grounds to implicate herself in some kind of Internet or child-endangerment crime, even though she made very sure that the images of her daughter on the website were not even remotely pornographic and were only slightly lewd, which, she rationalized, was subjective anyway. Dawn realized that she could just have looked up the specific laws she was concerned about on the Internet, but she felt, no matter how irrational she knew her feelings to be, that a Google search of these laws might alert the authorities to her activities. She wanted no record on her computer that might indicate she knew she was doing anything wrong, just in case it could ever be used against her. Instead, she thought she might be able to bring up certain issues in the meeting that might illuminate her on the specific laws that she felt she was coming increasingly close to breaking. She hoped that Patricia would know something about all of this, and although she thought the watch-group itself, and the meetings it held, were ridiculous, she hoped they might help her this one time.

  Dawn came in and introduced herself to Liz and Kent. Kent immediately noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and thought about slipping away to the bathroom to remove his, but it was too late. He saw Dawn look down at his hand at the same time he looked at hers. He made a mental note to take the ring off after the meeting.

  Although Kent held on to a small sliver of hope that somehow he and his wife would work things out, he knew that she was in California with Greg Cherry, having sex with Greg Cherry. At the beginning of their separation, he was too emotionally distraught to think about having sex with anyone other than his wife, and he remained so for many months after she had moved out of their home. But since she moved to California, his libido had picked up. In the past month or so, he had promised himself that, even if he and his wife were to work out their differences and end up together, he would not squander this opportunity to have sex with someone who was not his wife—perhaps even more than one woman if he could. He had begun to see his wife’s decision to leave him for another man as an insult, and where he once felt only emotional pain, he was now beginning to feel anger, and with that anger he was beginning to subscribe more and more to an eye-for-an-eye philosophy. He wasn’t sure yet how he would let his wife know that he was having sex with another woman—how he would get the information to his wife that he was no longer a broken man without her, but instead a man who was desirable to other women and capable of having sex with them—but he knew that once she was aware of the fact, she would more than likely regret giving up what they had together for the company of Greg Cherry.

  Dawn Clint was the first woman Kent had seen since his separation who made him think about sex again in a carnal and pornographic way. As their hands touched in a brief handshake, Kent imagined what her breasts looked like, what her nipples were like, if she liked to have them sucked during the sexual act, if she had ever engaged in anal sex or had any kind of sexual interaction with a woman. These thoughts seemed almost foreign to him, because he hadn’t had them in so long, but they were welcome.

  Dawn found Kent attractive and wondered who his wife was, if she had met her through her dealings with the Goodrich booster club or other various school functions. She said, “So, does your kid play football or. . . . Just trying to figure out if I’ve met your wife or anything. My daughter’s an Olympianne.”

  Kent said, “No. You haven’t met her, I’d guess. The short version of the story is, my kid doesn’t play football this year. He did last year, but he decided not to this year. Plays a lot of video games instead now. That’s why I’m here, I guess. And my wife is in California.”

  Dawn said, “Oh, business trip or something?”

  Kent said, “No, more like she’s living with another guy.”

  Dawn said, “Oh, oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I saw the ring and just . . . I’m sorry.”

  Kent said, “It’s okay. I probably should have said ex-wife. The divorce is still a little fresh, I guess.” Not wanting to give the impression that he still had any feelings for his ex-wife, Kent added, “But we’ve been separated for a long time, so . . .”

  They continued to talk for a few more minutes, Kent shifting the conversation to more innocuous topics like movies and television shows. When he asked what she did for a living, Dawn just said that she worked for an Internet startup company as a webmaster. Kent found himself more interested in the specifics of her job than he would have thought, but his lack of skill in talking to women stopped him from probing the matter further. His lack of interest in his own job, accompanied by that same lack of skill in talking to women, led him to answer the same question, when it was posed to him, with, “I work in sales for a shipping company. Nothing exciting.” Despite Kent’s missteps in the conversation, they got along well; they shared an easily recognizable attraction, made stronger by the fact that they were each aware of the other’s mutual availability.

  Dawn had been involved with only a small number of men in the thirteen years since moving in with her mother after her life in California. She had considered only one of them a boyfriend, and she knew from the beginning of that relationship that it would never result in marriage, based on her inability to ignore certain of the man’s habits that she found unbearably disgusting, including his habitual use of chewing tobacco. Something about Kent mad
e her irrationally hopeful. She was hesitant to let herself think that anything would come of their meeting, especially given the fact that Kent’s marriage was only recently legally concluded. Nonetheless, she found herself flirting with Kent uncontrollably and hoping that he would ask for her phone number before the end of the meeting.

  Eventually, five more parents of Goodrich Junior High School students arrived, and Patricia decided to start the meeting after each of them had had a chance to eat some pizza or pie. She gathered everyone in her living room and said, “I want to thank everyone for coming tonight. And I’d like to start by letting you all know that you should be proud, because this is the biggest turnout Parents Against The Internet has ever had. So when you go home tonight, feel free to send out e-mails or pass on fliers letting even more people know about our meetings.

  “Now, I usually like to start every meeting by opening it up to anyone who might have specific questions, but since we have a few new faces tonight, I thought I’d kick it off by telling you guys a little bit about us, about PATI, and then you can all introduce yourselves.

  “I started PATI, which stands for Parents Against The Internet, a while back, after I just read and heard too much about how dangerous the Internet and cell phones and video games and all that stuff can be if you’re not careful—especially for kids who are reaching the age ours are reaching. I basically just want to help as many parents as I can to be informed about what they can do to protect their kids and their families and even themselves from the dangers of the online world, which get worse and worse every day as new technology comes out. I guess that’s about it. So, now, Kent and Dawn, why don’t I turn the floor over to you, so you can tell us a little bit about yourselves and also how you heard about PATI?”

  Kent and Dawn exchanged a knowing glance, slightly horrified and slightly amused by what they realized they had stumbled into. Kent said to Dawn with mock chivalry, “Ladies first,” to which she replied with mock flattery, “How gentlemanly of you.” They were clearly bonding to some degree in their mutual assessment of their inaugural PATI meeting as being slightly absurd.

  Dawn said, “I’m Dawn Clint. I have a daughter, Hannah, who goes to school at Goodrich. I’m doing the Olympiannes’ scrapbook this year, if any of you have a daughter who’s on the squad.” Dawn paused to see if this bit of information got any reaction. It didn’t. She continued, “Um. . . . Well, I heard about your group through a flier that I found in the principal’s office, and I just thought I’d check it out, because I guess you can’t be too safe, right? And that’s about it.”

  Patricia said, “Well, welcome to the group. Kent?”

  Kent said, “My name’s Kent Mooney. My son, Tim, goes to Goodrich. He used to play football, but he’s been playing a lot of video games lately, kind of retreating from the world, it seems like, so I thought I’d come and find out all I could about how I can get him back to normal life.”

  Patricia said, “And how did you find out about PATI?”

  Kent said, “Oh, uh, one of your fliers was actually sent home with Tim’s last report card.”

  Patricia said, “Oh, really? Well, that’s just wonderful. I had spoken to a few teachers about the idea, but I had no idea they were going to implement it. That’s really just . . . so wonderful. Okay. Well, I suppose we can get the open-questions portion of the meeting started with you, then, Kent, since you’ve already brought up your son’s problem. Video games are bad. It doesn’t matter what you read, or how many studies claim they’re harmless. I can show much better studies that claim the contrary. Video games are terrible on almost every level for a child’s development. They teach children to be antisocial and to engage in violent attitudes and behavior. Video games called ‘first-person shooters’ are very widely believed to be the cause of the Columbine tragedy, and flight-simulator programs, which are a version of video games, were instrumental in training the terrorists who flew the planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Nothing good has ever come from video games.”

  Kent said, “But how do you really feel about video games?” Dawn couldn’t stifle a laugh.

  Patricia said, “I know I come off strong sometimes in my reaction to video games and their impact on our youth culture, but it’s a serious matter. Does your son play many different games, or is there one that he plays more than the others? Some are far worse than others.”

  Kent said, “He plays World of Warcraft almost exclusively, as far as I know. He has an Xbox but he doesn’t really ever play it anymore. He’s always on the computer.”

  Patricia said, “Well, World of Warcraft is one of the worst games out there. A couple in China played it so much, and for so long, that they neglected their baby for three days and it died from dehydration. Another man in Korea played it for so long that he forgot to eat or drink, and he died in the seat he was playing it in. Kent, and anyone else who is aware of their child playing this game, I urge you to get them stop. Uninstall the game from his computer immediately and never let him reinstall it. If you need help with that, I can print you out an FAQ about it.”

  Kent, feeling that Patricia’s reaction to the game was slightly unwarranted, said, “I’m not sure it’s that bad. He still does well in school; it’s not like the game is destroying his life or anything. It just seems like he’s been a little more introverted lately, and I thought maybe the game had something to do with it. I was really just looking for more of an explanation of what the game is like, if you might know that kind of thing.”

  Patricia said, “I know exactly what it’s like. I’ve seen the television commercials. It’s a virtual world, Kent, where your son has made an avatar. An avatar is a visual representation of the person playing the game, which very often has demonic or evil-looking features. And, when he’s plugged into that avatar, he thinks that that world, the World of Warcraft, is the real world. This world doesn’t matter anymore. His friends don’t matter, school doesn’t matter, you don’t matter, he doesn’t even matter. The only things that matters are his avatar and the other World of Warcraft avatars, which he thinks are his real friends.”

  On some level, as Kent listened to Patricia’s anti-video-game rhetoric, he felt like defending his son, like telling the whole room that he wasn’t a deviant, like the picture Patricia was painting—the boy who sat in his room all day playing a game and not taking the time to bathe or eat or drink or relieve himself. In a strange way, Patricia’s tirade left Kent feeling closer to his son than he had in a long time.

  Patricia said, “Does that answer your question, Kent?”

  Kent said, “Yeah, I think so. Thanks.”

  Patricia turned to Dawn and said, “Dawn, as the other brand-new PATI member, I’d like to open the floor to you if you have a specific question.”

  Dawn said, “Yeah, thanks. Um . . . I guess, you know, my daughter is getting to that age where she’s starting to, um . . . develop, and you know, you worry about what can happen, especially when she’s on the Internet all the time and Facebook and always texting and all of that. I was just wondering if you knew what the laws were about, like, I guess, what people can and can’t say in e-mail or can and can’t post on the Internet, I guess as it relates to Internet predator type stuff and child pornography. Things like that.”

  Patricia said, “This is a very good question and one that I’ve actually researched quite a bit. This is something that we should all be paying much more attention to than we do, because in our state the laws are far more lenient than they should be. Essentially, anyone can say anything they want to your children online if they don’t know they’re minors. So my best advice is to go home after tonight’s meeting and set up a practice role-play session with your kids. It might seem weird at first, but you should be playing the role of potential Internet predators, and your kids, of course, would play themselves. Start off by asking them something very normal, like what their favorite movie is or something like that, and see how they respond. The first thing they should ever tell anyone online that the
y don’t know—and I know it’s scary to think that your kids might be talking to people they don’t know online, but they are. You just have to accept that and hope you’ve drilled them and coached them enough to be able to handle themselves.

  “So, anyway, the first thing your kids should do is ask who the person is and tell the person that they’re under eighteen. Once that’s done, it then becomes illegal for that person to bring up any kind of sexual topic. If they do, it’s all right there in your computer, and I can show you how to go into your kids’ computers and call back up whatever chat sessions they have logged in their history, so you can see who they’ve been talking to and what they’ve been talking about. Anyway, I hope that kind of answered your question, Dawn.”

  Dawn said, “Kind of. I was also wondering what kind of images are legal and illegal to put up on the web. I mean, say my daughter sent a picture of herself in a bikini or something like that to someone in an e-mail or something—is that against the law?”

  Patricia said, “I don’t think that is, no. I’m pretty sure that, as long as your daughter isn’t nude in the pictures, she’s not doing anything illegal. But I would have to say that if your daughter is sending people images of herself in a bikini, you should probably have a talk with her as soon as possible about online etiquette and decorum. I know none of our kids are thinking about jobs and their adult lives yet, but I guarantee you that none of them will want some compromising photo of themselves floating around the Internet when they start raising families and looking for jobs and all of that. We’re already starting to see people lose their jobs because of pictures they post on Facebook or Myspace. Our kids are really going to be the first generation that has lived their entire lives on the Internet. So any image they’ve posted of themselves, from childhood on, is going to be out there for anyone to see. So it’s our job to make sure that those photos are tasteful.”