The cartoon boy, sitting up on a bed with his knees extended and his feet tucked under his buttocks, straddled Cartoon-Stephen, who lay on his back, looking up at the cartoon boy, expectantly, impatiently. The cartoon boy kept his head bent downward, his eyes tightly shut. Stephen rested his right hand on the cartoon boy's left thigh, and with his left hand he stroked, and squeezed, and fondled the cartoon boy's penis. The cartoon boy's arms hung loosely at his sides as he slowly, methodically, twisted clumps of the bedsheet, let go, grasped the bedsheet, and twisted it in his hands, slowly, slowly. Stephen let go of the cartoon boy's penis, and in one commaless run-on sentence said, "Something better happen pretty darned quick my hand is getting tired."

"Nothing's happening, nothing's going to happen, I'm sorry," the cartoon boy said.

FASTFORWARD, blur, PLAY. And the cartoon boy had returned to his own living room, seated beside the cartoon moose, watching me watch him.

I looked up at Bullwinkle but our eyes did not meet. He drank his Pepsi and stared at the cartoon moose staring at him.