I was forced into child labor at an early age.  I blame my parents.  Denied more traditional outlets for pre pre-teen angst like vodka, cocaine, leather & rubber fetish porn, etc. I submitted readily to the opening chords of gag & novelty addiction’s sweetly seductive siren song.  Every boy needs a hobby and while some eight-year olds on my street dabbled with classics like spray-painting “eat me” on stray cats, I opted for the exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle of mail order shopping.  Unfortunately this required money, rather elusive stuff for most grade-schoolers.

The Johnson Smith Company’s gag pushers sunk their claws deep into my budding psyche with fresh musty-sweet scented newsprint catalogs beckoning me with “hours of fun!”, urging me to “fool all my friends!” and “get even with my teachers!”  Enraptured by the dulcet tones of my first whoopee cushion I tripped on paradisiacal visions of “so lifelike” severed fingers, rivers of fake vomit and dog poo, a land of milk and honey where Billy Bob hillbilly teeth grew on trees, where shy third-graders armed with hand buzzers and dribble glasses miraculously transformed themselves into “life of the party” demigods.

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As luck would have it, at nineteen I happened upon my first real girlfriend ( defined as “the kind you get to see naked.  Totally naked.  Sans fluffy turkish towel.”)  and all my old self-inflicted conflicts  high-tailed it out of my psyche to make room for an entirely new, upgraded set of college-level neuroses.

Lexi  was a tall, thin blonde with the kind of ass a fella’ doesn’t even begin to truly appreciate until he’s at that age where he can’t get one anymore. ( At least not for free.)   In the carnival funhouse mirror of her hang-ups and issues, my problems looked like a wet Maltese shivering next to Rosie O’Donnell after three weeks locked up in a cake shop.  But who was I to complain?  At least I’d found a willing and suitable lab partner for Organ-ic Chemistry 101.

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Adrian was a only a year older than I but at that age, a one year disparity is fully ten percent of a lifetime.  A lot of shit can happen in ten percent of a lifetime, particularly to studs like my eleven year old cousin.   Youngsters like me didn’t question the wisdom of our elders, particularly elders who lived on the hipper, way more happening east coast where the word “no” was pronounced as an exotic and melodious “neeeeeeeeh-oooooooo” as opposed to the drab, uncool, plain vanilla “NO” that immediately identified us as mere midwestern suburban dorks whose biggest thrill was brain-freeze,  headaches incurred from sucking down Slurpees too quickly.  We simply listened and learned.

Adrian was the sophisticated out-of-towner, my mentor in coolness, my own personal Fonzie who taught me that wearing a belt with shorts was totally uncool, a lesson I mention only to highlight his obvious credibility in sexual tutelage, as though his frayed cut-offs imprinted with images of tiny hot dogs encased in tiny buns, warm apple pies, and phallic baseball bats & balls could possibly lead a perceptive human being to any other conclusion.

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My sex life got off to a fairly inauspicious start sometime during sixth grade.  I’m not sure what day, month, or even season.  It might have been September, it might have been May for all I know.  Elementary school is a blur to me, mostly just a whirlwind of unconnected events and memories.

In those days, time was organized into four distinct seasons:  School, Christmas break, More School and Summer Vacation.   I suspect it might have been either late School or early More School as I have a vague recollection of getting the shit kicked out of me for wearing what is now referred to in trendy “Look at me I shop at REI”  circles as a “Sherpa hat” but back then was more affectionately known as “some dumbass retarded winter hat that Stinky’s mom makes him wear so he doesn’t catch the sniffles.”

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