Somebody was sitting on our bench. It wasn’t really our bench, but we thought of it that way. It was at the far end of the cemetery over the hill and all but surrounded by tall, scraggly hedges. The nearest tombstones were ancient, the inscriptions worn smooth. In all the time we’d been in the cemetery, nearly every Sunday after church for more than two years now, we’d never seen anyone there. Not even close.

The man on our bench was an older black man, and he was naked. His body seemed to be in pretty good shape for an old guy, with his age showing mostly in his face, all wrinkly. He didn’t seem to notice us, or anyway he paid us no mind. We’d stopped short, about twenty feet away, partially hidden by some of the hedges.

“What do you think?” I whispered to Peter.

“I don’t know,” Peter whispered back. “He seems to be contemplating something.”

“But he’s on our bench,” I said.

“Maybe he’ll leave soon,” Peter suggested.

We stood there awhile. It didn’t look like he was going to be leaving any time soon. He was barely moving, hardly changing his position, almost like a statue.

“So what should we do?” I asked. “Should we just leave?”

“I guess so,” Peter said.

“But it’s our bench. And this is the only time...”

“Maybe if you explained that to him,” Peter said, voice and expression denoting he wasn’t serious.

“Maybe if you beat the shit out of him,” I responded.

Peter’s head jerked back.

“I mean it’s not like he has a gun,” I added.

“Seriously you want me to...?”

I shrugged. “It was an idea.”

“Okay,” Peter said, “here’s an idea. What if you offer him a blowjob if he’ll leave.”

“Yeah, but what if he’s gay?” I said. “Wait, if he’s gay maybe you could give him the blowjob.”

Peter didn’t have an immediate answer for that, but after a bit he said, “What if we just went up there and sat down?”

“There’s not really enough room,” I said. “Unless we sat on either side of him.”

“You could sit on my lap,” he suggested. “You end up on my lap anyway.”

That was true. After we discovered the bench, after we’d been coming to it for a few weeks and no one else was ever in evidence, we’d started making out, and I made sure to wear a wide skirt. We so looked forward to our time on the bench. We’d come even in the rain.

“Do you think he’s homeless?” Peter asked. “Maybe if we offered him some money.”

“That would be insulting,” I said. “And racist.”

“So what do you want to do?” Peter asked again.

“I want us to sit on our bench. I want us to sit on our bench and fuck.”

“Okay, then, let’s do it,” Peter said.

“But maybe we should take our clothes off first. Wouldn’t that be the polite thing to do?”

“I knew you weren’t serious,” Peter said.

“I’ll show you how serious I am,” I said.