If Mr. Jane is interested, I can find out what The Boy is asking for it.

I'll talk to him tonight (if he calls from work) or tomorrow. I know he's been dying to ride again. I think we're selling the truck since the rail has expanded enough to get us where we need to be.

See, you ask a question like that, and you're going to be sorry you asked.

What did you tell them?

Apparently giving in to the passion of the moment is less of a sin than planning ahead of time for sex.

That's really common, and as Emily says, not entirely illogical. Impractical, but not illogical. But honestly, that kind of thinking applies to a much wider range of human stupidity that just the intersection of religion and sex.

But honestly, that kind of thinking applies to a much wider range of human stupidity that just the intersection of religion and sex.

Yeah. To be fair, first-degree murder is considered worse than second....

See, you ask a question like that, and you're going to be sorry you asked.

What did you tell them?

That The Boy is friends with the husbands of the women I took bellydancing with, and I met him through them.

Which is more or less true, just kind of shifty on the timeline.

To be fair, first-degree murder is considered worse than second....

First-degree is "Well, I decided I wanted him to die, so I organized some things to make it happen," isn't it? And second-degree is "You didn't hear what the motherfucker said about my mama! You'd have killed him, too, if you'd have heard it!"

Or, as Terry Pratchett put it, "Then one day a woman finds herself with a bent poker and a dead husband, saying, 'He shouldn't have said that about our Neville.'"

I should probably put this in Other Media in case anyone knows his book, but...my sister's dating a librarian/screenwriter/comic book writer. He has good taste, good sense of humor and uses Jossian phrasing ("But I think I'm even more influenced by the novelists I adore (and by 'adore', I do mean 'steal from'): James Ellroy, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, George Pelecanos.")

ohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I like this one better than the last one.

That The Boy is friends with the husbands of the women I took bellydancing with, and I met him through them.

Which is more or less true, just kind of shifty on the timeline.

I have led the sort of life that rarely has boys around that need to be explained to my mother, so I've been spared even a kink-free need to explain. But I'd probably do what you did, perhaps even skip the "I met him through them" and just look at them like I'd said it.

People are often willing to do the work of lying to themselves if you lead them adjacent to the deception.

Generally, saying "oh, you know, the usual -- through friends," tends to work, except when you get really nosy people like *my parents* (eeeeek!), who ask, "Oh, what friends?"

"you don't know them" works too.

"you don't know them" works too.

"They're in Canada" has proven to be useful....