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.
I listened with rapt attention there in the cool grass by the volleyball court, my reactions vascillating between fascination, disgust, horror and disbelief. I soon learned that I could make a baby simply by getting together with a girl and peeing.
I recoiled in horror at the notion that I was flushing innocent children down the toilet several times a day, not to mention all the poor babies whose lives were cut short under trees and bushes around the cottage. Adrian settled my nerves by clarifying that babies were only created with a special kind of pee available only during an erection and that again, a girl was a critical component of the process.
I breathed a sigh of relief and muttered a silent prayer for the innocent unborn forced to dwell in my bladder. Shortly thereafter I began to worry that I’d never have children as I found it nearly impossible to urinate with a full-on boner, but I figured I’d work it out somehow now that the important basics of the vast sexual mysteries had been revealed to me.
Nevertheless, I still hadn’t a clue why anyone would want to pee with a girl. But clarity would soon be achieved via my first hands-on sexual experience, courtesy of a stunning older blonde woman with exemplary breasts. Coincidentally, they were the only breasts I’d ever seen, so imagine my good fortune at having tracked down an exemplary pair so readily!
I never got her real name but she lived in our basement amongst stacks of my mother’s Cosmopolitan magazines. What compelled me to leaf through them I don’t know, but I sensed instinctively that between their glossy pages, wonderful treasures awaited discovery. Something deliciously forbidden beckoned from within those stacks, a calling I was powerless to resist.
I wasn’t a big fan of Cosmo, mind you, but with research and diligent effort I discovered that on average, every third issue contained at least one photo of real live naked two-dimensional glossy full color boobs. (I was maybe twelve at the time; two dimensions were plenty and still at least one dimension more than I was prepared to handle.) Most of the time the boob shot would be found in the “Cosmo Tells All” section. Armed with this revelation I quickly and efficiently sorted the magazines into “booby” and “no booby” piles. I spent the rest of the afternoon with the booby pile, marveling at my wondrous new-found bounty of luscious half-nakedness.
And then I saw her: My first love. You never forget your first. I can see her now, in the sauna, a fluffy white turkish towel wrapped around her tanned, sweaty thighs and another around her luxurious blonde locks. And perched between, the gold mine, the pay-off for my diligence: two glorious, perfect breasts, glistening with beads of perspiration.
I named her Donna. No particular reason; it just struck me as a good name for a hot blonde with great tits. The rising tension in my loins felt unfamiliar, yet oddly appealing. I was suddenly overcome by the urge to get naked. But not here. Even at that innocent age I instinctively sensed that neither of my parents would be thrilled to discover their boy laying on the basement floor, pants around his ankles, perusing mom’s beauty magazines.
I came up with a plan. Discretely, I smuggled Donna out on our first date, wrapping her in an old sweater as she accompanied me to the upstairs bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I proceeded to gently spread the pages of Cosmo apart. They offered no resistance. Donna gave herself to me fully and willingly. She was as eager as I was. For what, I still didn’t know, but eager nonetheless. I shed my pants and laid beside her on the floor.
And then it happened. What exactly happened, I didn’t know. But happen it did. And I liked it. Then it was over, almost as quickly as it had begun. What had Donna done to me? How to get her to do it again? I tried willing it over and over but to no avail. I closed the pages, I opened the pages. I put my pants on, I took them off again. I stared at my crotch. I begged. I pleaded with it. Nothing. I put the magazine back in the sweater, ran down to the basement and retraced my footsteps exactly, hoping to recreate the entire process. I laid down with Donna once again, exactly as I had done the first time. Still nothing.
I wasn’t stupid, mind you, just lacking in quality public school sex education. I had no explanation for what had just occurred. But I’d learn. Soon I’d come under the expert tutelage of Mssrs. Hefner, Guccione and Flynt, the unholy trinity of titillation, the father, the son, and the “holy shit, Batman!”
Hungry to expand my education, I progressively ransacked the entire house in search of more study aids and eventually found an entire curicculum under my parents’ bed: a small but adequate pile of skin mags spanning the entire educational spectrum from Playboy (the porn equivalent of grade school) to Penthouse (junior high), Club (high school) and right on up to the pinnacle of post-graduate sex education, the Ph. D of Porn: Hustler.
While Professors Guccione and Flynt helped me to “fill the gaps” in my sexual education, some of their lessons were mixed blessings. Within their texts I learned not only of the pleasures of sex, but also the pitfalls, problems and maladies. Somewhat of a perpetual worrier and rather neurotic as a child, I developed quite a few imagined sexual dysfunctions long before I’d ever so much as see my first real live naked woman.
My slide down the slippery slope of sexual hypochondria began upon reading a blurb about an unfortunate European fellow who held the dubious distinction of sporting the world’s longest pubic hair. Not just bad luck but a medical condition, an affliction I was quite certain would infect me moments after the onset of puberty. Nary a dark hair on my peach-fuzzed white butt at this point, I could already hear the ridicule on the playground as I’d inevitably trip over my too-long & curlies while running for a fly-ball. And what girl would have a boy like that?
I wasn’t paranoid; I had scientific evidence for my impending malady: With his shirt off, my dad looked as though someone had stapled several mid-sized grizzly bears to his chest and upper back. I knew that the gene for outrageous pubes must surely be lurking somewhere deep within my DNA, just waiting for the most inopportune moment to express itself. Oh well. At least all that time spent mindlessly rubbing the suede of my Buster Browns from tan to brown and back again wasn’t wasted but perhaps had prepared me well for a lonely future of self-gratification.
To be continued…