Sex — And The Single Boy

At twelve there's a heightened interest in the naughty things that older people keep from kids. This is partly due to wider contacts in the social world.

We were in Junior high-school with thirteen and fourteen year olds who knew a lot more than we did and they were quick to share their knowledge of the world with dumb innocents. Forget Latin or algebra or woodcarving. Their smarts were in talk that was prohibited around parents and other grown-ups.

The kid in the schoolyard who recited the poem about Germans was precocious: an exception. Parents didn't want their children to repeat that sort of thing. On the road to being bright, recitation had limits. We would step up from nursery rhymes in a more civilized way than "There's a German in the grass with a bullet up his ass..."

The National Geographic showed boys what they could expect to see if older girls took their shirts off. "O the girls out west had mountains on their chests..." That's schoolyard poetry. Boys would giggle at the barebreasted women from Borneo. We were satisfied with this little introduction to what was known as sex. We came to know that something called pornography existed but that was in France and you could go to jail for looking at it. We, boys, could look at breasts and nipples when they appeared in the Geographic but where would girls get a legal peep at boys' plumbing? Probably at the art museum...less accessable, I suppose.

We joined the Boy Scouts at twelve. Todays kids can be scouts at an earlier age if they want. They quit earlier too. When we got together as a patrol we would pool our knowledge of things: not Latin or Algebra or woodcarving.

The influences of the world were at hand.

Biographical works might be considered incomplete if the writer doesn't note those first sexual conquests. Henry Miller introduced the explicit in raw language to English speaking readers. Novels don't count although the peccadillos of their stories probably are culled from their authors' experiences. But the confessions (or braggings) of writers who tell about first-time sex with Adele or Betsy or Carole are commonplace. (Ho-hum!) They argue that their books would be incomplete without including such narrative.

That sells books! An inordinate importance is attached to these events and they are an expected part of honest writing. The reader, through his or her imagination, is an accepted voyeur: For the sake of the author, an expected voyeur. It's pathetic; there are three things wrong with this attitude that has become canon.

First, Adele or whoever is put at a disadvantage. The narrative might be exaggerated. Even if it is faithful it's probably been written without consent. I imagine me writing of my own loss of "virginity" at , say thirteen (a good age when titilating readers — and getting some "respect"), or at fourteen, or fifteen. Or whatever. I should name my partner. Or is it seductress? Or pawn? Doris? Edna? Frannie? That's almost fifty years ago and perhaps the girl's father, now maybe eighty-three, reads it and isn't amused. In a worse scenario, she might be now fifty years in a convent and a potential Mother Teresa. There's damage here. So what! It sells books.

Secondly, the premise (honest writing) is suspect. It's an intrusion to excite readers at the expense of the rest of the story. It's the same excess that has to drop the "F-bomb." But, it's argued, what is a biography that doesn't include natural experience? Right! Going to the toilet is a natural experience. I've never read voluminous accounts of great men or small sitting on the bowl. An author can put four-hundred pages of sex between covers and retire to the Caribbean on royalties. Four hundred pages of describing the natural act of taking a crap is going to elicit disgust no matter how poetic it might be. Ah! Perhaps it would be preferable to write about masturbation. It works in cinema. Woody Allen gets a lot of mileage out of references to masturbation. Writers have a chance here if they don't want to indict Gloria or Harriet or Inez. Masturbation, honestly chronicled, involves fantasy and since biographies are always at risk of going a little beyond narrative truth and tempted with fantasy, a confession (or bragging) about masturbation might sell books.

Finally, emphasis on the scatological is given currency these days. It's expected, we're assured. Check out the comedians you like, or your neighbor likes. When we were little we giggled at repulsive things. It didn't amuse adults who thought things that we viewed as amusing were really disgusting: bums who dropped their pants in front of a crowd, kids who held lunger contests, obnoxious behavior by us, being wise-assed. Adults were sophists who gave up spitting lungers for distance and playing clowns. They would have sex but we didn't know about it.

There was a time when we imagined that our own parents didn't do that sort of thing that we occasionally saw dogs doing in the street, and buckets of water were at the ready to end the public show. We were victims of doubts propagandized by cartoonists whose explicit art depicted babies being delivered in cabbage trucks or by storks. That myth collapsed through a confusion of truths that were revealed in school yard conversations and in other places where boys gathered as gangs. Kids were observers by natural inclination. Some things were not meant to be seen. Some places were not to be visited. Some deeds were not allowed to be shared...yet.

Sex had many deviant manifestations that reduced its attraction (momentarily) but at the same time heightened odd curiousities. That's evident whenever news items appear about notorious sex crimes. Readers are repulsed but are morbidly hungry about details. The content of novels, of teleplays, of movies, of biographies will be more widely accepted if sex is detailed. It seems as though our world is full of keyholes.

At twelve, we joined the Boy Scouts. A lot of bad press has been directed at incidents in scouting that deserve bad press. These things are not scouting's monopoly. They appear at schools, at YMCAs, at choir, at anyplace where boys band together and where counsellors appear. They happen down in the woods and at movie houses and in Sunday Schools and sacristies, and at amusement parks. The Scout Handbook had advice, handed down by the founder, warning of self-abuse of the body. It paralleled the admonition written in catechism. Useless stuff. Boys learned, somehow or other, to masturbate and for most it would be a private exercise.

If you want to make money, write a reference book about the personal introduction to masturbation and interview three hundred adults who have good memory. It will go on the best seller list with the four hundred page book about another author's experience on the bowl. Many mothers laid in their beds at night and heard the squeak of bedsprings elsewhere in the house.

"What are you doing in there?" they call to teenage sons who are out of control. When the parents' bed shook, it was inadvisable to even think about it. No kid wanting to survive the night would yell up the hall "What are you doing in there?." The very thought was embarrassing because what they were doing was the stuff we gathered up in dirty stories in the schoolyard and at camp.

Little boys didn't play with girls who skipped rope, played jacks and hopscotch, and tidied up doll houses and talked to dollies that they constantly dressed and undressed. Boys who skipped rope were losers. Girls were equally hostile to us. But at about eleven, a bit ahead of our interests, girls showed some aggressiveness and turned their designs to flirtation which of course we rejected because there was no conscensus among the gang to accept it. (It might lead to jacks.) But there were puzzles, questions, mysteries, things that needed answering. The roots of these things seemed out of place at home where talk was in another language. If we had questions about things sexual we got answers from the equally ignorant: our pals. Those who really knew would lie to us and feed us stories about cabbage trucks and storks. Those who didn't know invented or exaggerated fictions or professed the same ignorance. Like all who proceeded us we would want, with not a little fear, to experiment.

Foreplay might be an extended process. It might take months or years. So, when we went to dances courage and foolishness permitted us to eventually plod around the floor with the object of our lascivious thoughts. We held them so gingerly that it felt absurb.

I don't remember how I came about to know about masturbation but when I read about it in my Boy Scout Handbook it was too late. The sages who told us about storks said we would go blind if we played with ourselves. We were suspicious of people who wore glasses. That passed. We realized that it was a fable. The guilty shoud be walking into walls and trees.

Three kids from school had access to rubbers. When pharmacists hire teenagers they should expect pilferage from the till, from the candy stock, from the cigarette supply and from the drawer that was full of rubbers. A big kid lived down the street. He was older than me but a little younger than my sister. This kid knew about sex and he must have had a friend who worked in a drugstore. I was dumb. I thought babies came up the street in the cabbage truck. He blew that story out of the water and he reinforced truth by giving me a rubber.

"Wadda I do with it?" There were no directions.

"You put it on." I was supposed to know the rest of the scenario. But I was dumb. I put it in my pocket. Through dinnertime I had a bad feeling that there might be a body-search.

If a kid places a rubber on the bureau or his desk at bedtime with all that other stuff that was in his pockets he might have some rather dicey explaining ahead. My rubber was a ticket of some eventual passage and that night when I went to bed I put it on. It fell off when I was asleep. After a panicky search in the morning I found it at the foot of the bed. I tucked it back into its package and disposed it in a hedge on the way to school. This was a shaky introduction to something not programmed for kids my age.

Rubbers were everywhere. The kids who worked in drug stores passed them out at school. Catholics weren't allowed to wear them but the kids who worked in drug stores were Catholics, mostly. Maybe they couldn't wear them so they gave them to the Protestants. Now and then we would see one on the ground at the arboretum or tossed shamelessly away on the street. Word got around. When someone saw one he'd tell the gang and they would all go over to look at it. Was this the actual site of the deed?

Our boyscout patrol met in Tommy Nethery's garage on Tuesday afternoons. We weren't dumb anymore and we, by collective intelligence, knew what rubbers were used for. We would unroll one, put it under a convenient spigot in back of Tierney's house and fill it with water, tie a knot at the top and throw it at a passing bus. Rubbers were made for water-fights; raucus laughter followed every hit — and most misses.

Loading these water-bombs was a two person job. One held the open end secure against the tap and had to hold the bottom with his other hand to guard against it breaking. The other guy turned the water on, then off.

I held the rubber. Strausser opened the valve. It's amazing how much water a rubber holds. Strausser stepped back. "Turn it off." I yelled that a couple of times and Strausser was off and running. ("See ya."). Engineers know what to do. An adroit move or two could prevent disaster. I'm not so clever. The rubber stretched to absurb proportion, and then....

Pshew! Water, water, everywhere; I was soaked head to toe. "I'll get you, Richie Strausser."

All the rubbers were gone when I got a chance to go over the lots with an aggressive girl who had all of her plans made when she came up to my porch. She knew other things about rubbers and the trip to the lots would be out without taking one along.

I had balloons. I had squandered all my rubbers on what balloons were made for. Now I had an opportunity and all I had were balloons. We went to the lots with balloons and fumbled badly. We came home unspoiled.

Sex is a chemistry. Those who we desire and those who desire us aren't necessarily in concert. Really! Puppy loves are the first of many plateaux and might be one-sided love affairs that hardly get to the point of verbal intercourse. We might even shy away from even saying "hello." And when aggressive girls make moves, we sometimes get picky and overstate our impression that they (not as pretty and safely remote as our puppy-loves) seem to demand from us. It's what we really didn't know that saved us.