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.”
Hatherly Elementary, the setting for my forthcoming shame, was architecturally typical of the period. A drab pentagon-shaped brick and steel structure reinforced with cinder block walls painted a sterile, bland off-white throughout its hollows, our school helped sustain the comfortable suburban delusion that direct Soviet missile strikes were survivable. This was the Cold War era and every month or so we’d all practice hiding under our desks, shocked into cowering submission by the ear-splitting volume of the fire bell. Apparently, crouching under a layer of thin-gauge steel and formica would protect us grade-schoolers from multi-gazillion degree thermonuclear fireballs while the rest of suburbia vaporized into oblivion.
One particular afternoon when the threat of hellish nuclear bombardment was apparently quite low, we were welcomed to remain seated above our desks, relax and enjoy our first formal lessons in human sexuality. The festivities would begin with a film strip exploring all the fascinating giggle-inspiring pubescent changes our budding young bodies would soon experience followed by a discussion session in which our teacher, Miss Landers (name changed to protect me from libel suits) would nervously do her best not to belie her utter and total ignorance on the subject of sex.
(While we innocent, sheltered suburban pupils weren’t yet particularly knowledgeable about the extracurricular activities of Man & Woman, least of all our teachers, it didn’t take more than a heaping dollhouse toy teaspoon of gray matter and a quick glance at her physiognomy to accurately conclude that Miss Landers was not the kind of woman upon whom the sex fairy bestowed the most generous of her wondrous gifts.)
A “film strip”, by the way, was the height of 1970s audio-visual technology, a short roll of film stuffed into a clunky cast iron device vaguely reminiscent of a cannon in shape, generally used as a teaching aid. Under dimmed lights still images were projected onto a screen while Mr. or Mrs. Educator read from a study guide and occasionally offered his or her own brilliant wisdom to a roomful of bored children who took advantage of the dark to pick their noses, yank girls’ pony tails or engage in the timeless game of “Pssst! Hey! Smell my finger!”
Miss Landers, a bell-shaped woman with monstrous buck teeth that could make any species of large earth-moving equipment fear for its job security, stood before us readying herself to make a brief pre-sex education announcement. She donned the horn-rimmed glasses which hung steadfastly from a silver chain that curved around her spectacular yet wildly assymetrical breasts, picked off the half-dried spittle which frequently accumulated in the corners of her mouth, cleared her throat and called out three names: Colleen, Kelly, and Mark.
My heart sank. We three had failed to make the permission-slip cut, our parents having decided that we weren’t quite emotionally prepared for the stunning revelation that there’d soon be little sprouts of hair around our naughty bits. I was now officially Loser of the Day, if not the week, the only boy in the entire sixth grade not worthy of being entrusted with the secrets of sex and puberty.
I followed the girls out into the adjoining library, my head hung low with shame, banished from the apparently cooler, hipper, more mature crowd, no longer certain of when these great mysteries might finally be revealed to me. As we sat at a table just outside the classroom, misunderstood pre-pubescent sexual tension hanging exquisitely thick in the air, I pondered the day when years earlier, I told my mom the first dirty joke I’d ever heard.
“Hey mom! Why is Peter Pan green?”
“Why honey?”, she replied in that typical suburban mom “my kid’s talking some asinine drivel again but for the sake of his fragile developing self-esteem I’ll pretend to give a shit” tone of voice.
“Well, if someone hit your peter with a pan you’d turn green too!”
I stood there grinning, eyes wide with anticipation and eyebrows cocked sharply upward awaiting approval and uproarious laughter. Much to my surprise and confusion I was instead scuttled out of the kitchen (this was back in the old days when moms still cooked), two palms pressed forcefully into my shoulder blades and ordered to go play in the yard. It’d be several years before my confusion was unwound with the revelation that most, if not all moms don’t have “peters.” At least not back in the 70s when I was growing up.
While the girls amused one another with the latest gossip about Donny Osmond and Leif Garett, I took this quiet library time to make a thorough study of my Buster Brown shoes and soon made an amazing discovery: That by massaging the suede in alternate directions I could turn the color of my shoes from tan to brown and back again. Kick-ass! My way-cool mom had surreptitiously clad me with a pair of mobile, stealth Etch-A-Sketches!
I proceeded to dazzle the girls by making the words “ass”, “dick” and “booger” appear and disappear with a few simple strokes of my fingernail. Ever the grateful audience, the girls returned the favor by promptly reporting to Miss Landers that I had been writing “ass”, “dick” and “booger” on my shoes. I responded with the time-tested “DID NOT!” defense, proudly displaying my clean and uniformly tan Buster Browns. Lacking any evidence regarding what would nowadays be considered felonious sexual harassment, Miss Landers looked at me suspiciously, shook her head and escorted us back into the classroom. Boys: 1, Girls: 0.
Feeling like a circus sideshow freak, I managed to avert everyone’s gaze while winding my way back to my seat through the gauntlet of pitying yet newly sexually-knowledgeable gawkers. I had been counting on my friends to enlighten me about the ways of manly men, but my queries into the mysteries of the fairer sex met with a rather cool reception. Apparently the privileged perusal of cartoon boobs had turned all of my friends into sophisticated mature Big Men About Town who instead chastised me for treating the subject so “childishly.” I was promptly informed that sex education was no casual nor laughing matter but in fact a badge of honor and distinction which would now serve to separate the boys from the…well, from the other boys who had gazed at cartoon boobs on a filmstrip.
Somehow I made it through the remainder of sixth grade, buoyed by the anticipation of summer at our family cottage, only an eternity away (in kid years). Whatever I lacked in formal sex education would soon be more than made up for with my cousin’s no-holds-barred, unfit-for-public-school-consumption version of all I really needed to know.
to be continued…