I. Let’s Talk About Sex
The night after what happened with Tricia, I felt like a total shit. I had pushed away the girl of my dreams, literally, and now she forever saw me as a monster. Quite frankly, I had begun seeing myself that way as well. In my efforts to stand up for myself, I had turned into exactly what I hated – a stupid thug, who, in lieu of having the ability to confront people on an intellectual level, instead resorted to fists. Truth was, despite my propensity for fighting, I was no more confident than ever, and was using violence to compensate.
Being only 11-years-old, I didn’t really comprehend the epiphany I was having, only that I decided right then and there to never fight again. I realized that, what little real friends I had, I had because I was funny. I witnessed the power of laughter by watching my dad and my grandpa, whenever they’d tell stories. Everyone’s attention would be fastened to their every word, and people seemed to enjoy their company whenever they were around, and it was all because they were funny. I wanted to be funny, like them, so I became a student of comedy. I studied every frame of Looney Toons intensely and reenacted the funniest parts. I watched sitcoms, talk shows, the Naked Gun movies, and stand-up comedy. From that day on, I was going to use my wits, my sense of humor, for every situation, no matter how serious or dire. I was going to laugh in the face of the oncoming storm. Of course, I didn’t become a pacifist overnight – I’d get into plenty more fights over the years, while I developed my sense of humor to the fine edge I needed it to be.
Nevertheless, what happened with Tricia lay heavy on my heart for a good long time. Her expression of disgust and hatred, directed exclusively at me, was burned into my memory forever. It made me sick with guilt every time I thought about it. Even now, as an adult, my shame of that day is as fresh as if it happened just last week.
I could never have guessed that my feelings of having transformed into a monster weren’t just based on Tricia’s perception of me, but also on the biological fact that I was at the cusp of puberty. My body was undergoing “strange and unusual” changes, as I was told by my teacher in school the day boys and girls were separated for sex ed, the idea being that girls and boys would learn about their respective sexual organs in separate room. I found it odd that we were divided out like that, as it seemed just as important, if not more so, to learn about how the genitals functioned for the opposite sex. I was, more or less, aware of what my penis was capable of – the purpose of the vagina, however, remained an elusive and vexing mystery. The more I learned about it, the more perplexed and upset I became. Certainly, as my hormones began to hijack the higher functions of my brain, vaginas began to have a certain allure. Whereas before I found them to be wholly unremarkable things, they slowly became objects of exotic mystery. I now saw that the vagina’s sullen, unassuming appearance was actually a misleading veneer, hiding away a veritable wonderland of… what, exactly? That’s the question that plagued my mind.
My mom, having sensed it was time to have “the Talk”, decided one Saturday afternoon to have me sit down in the living room, as she laid out the secrets of life in brutal, unrelenting detail. My mom proceeded to explain sexual reproduction, drawing jagged caricatures of sexual organs on a large sketchpad next to her as a hellishly embarrassing visual aid. My dad walked in at some point, observed what, to him, must have looked like the most fucked up game of Pictionary ever conceived, and walked right back out without saying a word, except a beer induced belch. Mom’s attention to detail was impeccable, sparing no room for imagination as the process was laid out page-after-page. Besides feeling very embarrassed by the ordeal, I also felt a sense of relief to finally grasp what sex was. All this time, whenever I stumbled upon a sex scene on television, I couldn’t figure out what was going on, besides two fully grown adults writhing against each other in a way that seemed kind of ridiculous. I figured the penis and vagina were involved in the equation; perhaps they rubbed against each other in some manner, or they politely conversed in some sort of dolphin speak, negotiating the prospect of having a baby, while the participants attached to the organs waited for a deal to be struck out. However, the penis going inside the vagina? I never would have suspected. It made so much more sense than my… ahem… half-cocked guesses.
However thorough my mom’s lecture was, she neglected to tell me the function of the clitoris, not to mention the necessity of lubricating the vagina for successful copulation. In retrospect, this was, perhaps, an act of mercy; as such particulars were really best learned by one’s friends while reverently gathered around a newly discovered Penthouse, discussing our respective theories about girls, vaginas, and their role in the Universe. Nevertheless, this made sex ed day at school all the more confusing. After sex ed, naturally, all the boys met up with the girls and exchanged intel about what they learned. A girl I had a crush on, because she resembled the character Dina from Salute Your Shorts, informed me that vaginas ejaculated “white stuff”. I recoiled, and told her, with no small amount of smugness, she must be confused, as I learned that it was actually penises that did that, not vaginas. She insisted that it was true, and I came away more confused than ever. The process of reproduction that was described to me did not involve vaginas ejaculating anything but a baby in nine months. What the hell was up with this “white stuff” all of a sudden? The rest of the day I felt depressed in the certainty that vaginas were most likely going to be a constant source of aggravation and mystification in my life.
II. Fiddlin’
As puberty continued its unstoppable, Hulk-like rampage through my body, other more subtle changes were transpiring in my brain. As evidenced by my previous posts, I’ve always been attracted to girls, but I never understood why. It was just instinct, as well as imitating what I observed the norm to be with adults. Any kind of sexual attraction was incidental at best, since, up until that point, I didn’t have any conception of what sex was, beyond the gratification of one’s sense of touch. For example, I had always been a very tactile person – I loved the way things feel. Whenever my parents took me to Lowes, I would amuse myself by feeling all of the different types of carpeting in one of those sample books. All I knew that I liked about girls was that their skin was generally very smooth and pleasant to the touch. Kind of like the felt on my Moss Man He-Man action figure. I could rub that action figure for hours.
When adolescence struck, I found a new action figure that I could rub for hours that was infinitely more entertaining: Stretch Armstrong. Of course, I’m not talking about the toy, but the name I came up with for my penis to amuse my friends. As an innocently curious child, I was always aware that it generally felt good to touch ol’ Stretch, but never did I think that there was any point to it. As I matured, however, and it became so sensitive that a light breeze was capable of giving me a boner, I began developing a newfound appreciation for it. I appreciated it day and night. I rather vigorously appreciated it, damn near every day, when I was a teenager. In fact, I never quite stopped appreciating it… probably never will either.
Something that most guys don’t talk about, and probably don’t even admit to themselves, is that their first go round with masturbation is fraught with disaster. There’s no way to prepare oneself for that experience. I remember that night vividly. That summer, my family moved to another house in a section of Louisville called Jeffersontown (casually known as J-Town). I had my own bedroom, a privilege I had been missing since our house in Alvaton, but this time I had my very own TV with cable. One night I was watching Weird Science, a TV series based on the movie, starring the super sexy Vanessa Angel as the wish-granting cyber goddess, Lisa.
My brand new appreciation of the female anatomy was dutifully devoted to the nearly perfect, voluptuous frame of Vanessa Angel. She served as the perfect default for my impressionable, adolescent mind of the perfection that the female form could achieve. Her sexy, exotic Australian accent was definitely a bonus. One night, during an episode in which Lisa wore a bikini that displayed her flawless breasts so well, they should have been credited as “Special guest stars”, I entertained the fantasy that I created my own version of Lisa, who was fully capable of granting wishes she was normally forbidden to grant in the show.
To augment this fantasy, my right hand wandered to my crotch, like a lone pilgrim on a journey to the Holy Land. Without going into graphic detail (why stop now?), I, er, wrestled with Stretch Armstrong until climax, which hit like an ice pick to the brain. I don’t remember much about my first orgasm except that it hurt like a bitch! My theory is that the underdeveloped human brain, not used to such a spike of pleasure, misinterprets the sensation as pain – at least, that’s how it was for me. I remember panicking, afraid that I had done it all wrong and somehow broken my penis. Then there was the mess… ick, the mess… I wasn’t expecting that part at all. Eventually, guys get to be really good at post-masturbatory clean-up; by the time we reach college, we’re CSI-level good. If one put on black lights, there would be no evidence that anything remotely sexual took place.
However, when guys are first starting out, they’re sloppy as hell. Semen is a very troublesome substance to deal with. Usually, the first method of disposal guys use are laundry – dirty socks, hand towels, underwear, anything that one’s mother is likely to inspect closely. Eventually, when one is forced to do their own laundry and they realize how gross it is to cake their own clothes with cum, they move on to disposable objects like Kleenex, toilet paper, or, in emergencies, the Sunday newspaper. Why Sunday? Because it’s usually bulky enough that nobody will notice a missing section.
After that frightening experience, I vowed never to do it again… and then a show called The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers premiered, starring a cute actress named Amy Jo Johnson as the Pink Ranger.
Before I knew it, while the Power Ranger theme played, as if cheering me on, I was jerking it again, and this time it went better… much, much better. However, just as I was getting a grasp on this whole masturbation situation, I ran into a snag: my mom gave birth to my little sister, which meant my brother had to share rooms with me again. Needless to say, I was upset: here I had found an activity to occupy my time that was more fun, and ultimately more satisfying, than Super Mario World, and now I had to share my room with my brother? This was going to be tricky. My parents bought us bunk beds, and I slept in the bottom. On some nights, when I was reasonably sure my brother was asleep, I’d clumsily go at it with no amount of stealth whatsoever. Suddenly, my brother would be like, “Craig, why is the bed shaking?”
“Tremors,” I’d respond nervously. “You know, like in that movie. Sandworms will get ya if you don’t shut and go to sleep.”
I made little to no attempt to cover up my new favorite hobby. Eventually, the longer-than-usual showers, the pile of laundry that had become stiffly molded into place, like a paper-Mache volcano, and my brother dutifully reporting to my parents that he slept through last night’s earthquake reasonably well, made it fairly obvious to my parents that their oldest son had reached “that stage”. Since my mom had explained sex to me, she tagged my dad in to give me the masturbation talk. He chose to discuss this with me during the annual Williams men’s fishing trip, which took place every Easter weekend. Through most of the trip, I had opted to forego fishing, and instead stay back in my grandpa’s camper, spending the bulk of the day whacking it to a sexy picture of a video game character named Mai Shiranui, from Fatal Fury:
I had quickly realized that I had been so focused on real life women, that I was totally neglecting consideration of fictional, but well drawn, characters like Chun-Li from Street Fighter II, Rogue from X-Men, or Jasmine from Aladdin. I mean, women who happened to be very attractive was one thing, but women who are specially designed to be attractive? That was something else all together. Really, I didn’t see how beating it to drawings of women was any different than what people must have done before photographs were invented. I’m sure, at some point in history, there lived a caveman that found a particular stick figure on the wall alluring, and after drawing two rough circles in the general vicinity of the stick figure’s chest, let his imagination run wild.
Anyway, my dad realized that now it was more important than ever for him to have “The Talk, part 2: the Masturbation Edition”. So, on the drive home, we sat in the cab of his work truck, in a relative silence only broken by the sound of him rolling Scotch tape in his fingers, which was an odd habit my dad engaged in. I suppose it’s better than smoking, but a strange habit nevertheless. He broached the subject by simply asking: “So… you been fiddlin’?”
“Fiddling?” I asked, genuinely puzzled by this line of inquiry.
“You know, fiddlin’,” he said, and we both sat in silence for a beat before he further clarified: “You’ve been jacking off. It’s okay, you’re grandfather’s done it, you’re uncle’s done it, and I’ve done it. Every guy does it.”
“Oh, fiddling!” I exclaimed relieved to know what we were talking about at last. Then my relief quickly faded to humiliation, and I said: “Nope. No, sirree, no fiddlin’ over here. Nope.”
“Craig… we could see grandpa’s camper rocking from the lake.”
“I was pretend wrestling,” I quickly responded, which, technically, wasn’t a lie. I was so into professional wrestling, I often engaged in wrestling imaginary opponents, usually represented by a pillow, whenever I was desperately bored. “I lost the championship belt to the Million Dollar Man, but only because IRS hit me with his steel briefcase. I’m going to get a rematch when I get home though.”
We were quiet for another awkward beat, his tape crackling. “You need to stop fiddlin’,” he stated flatly. “We can’t afford to keep buying you new socks.” He turned on the radio, effectively ending the discussion.
“Alrighty then,” I said, imitating one of my favorite comedy movies at the time, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and stared out the window, just glad the conversation was over. I was already mentally working out the feasibility of making in home in time to catch Saved by the Bell, as I was really into Kelly (Tiffany Amber Theson) at the time.
