attracted to what I saw. So I guess my first sexual attraction was to myself. That’s the type of thing that’s hard for me to admit. It sounds so narcissistic. I’ve heard that homosexuality is the ultimate form of narcissism because by wanting to have sex with someone of the same gender, we are really wanting to have sex with ourselves. Whatever. I just thought I looked hot.
Sometimes my penis would get hard and I didn’t know why. I came up with the theory that grown men’s penises were this big and hard all the time and, that since I was growing up, soon mine would be big and hard like this all the time. That didn’t seem very comfortable but if every man in the world dealt with it, so could I.
I also remember my second sexual attraction. All the boys in my sixth grade class took swimming lessons. I felt a strange sense of excitement inside me about changing clothes in the locker room with them, but I didn’t have a clue what that excitement meant, where it came from, or what it was about.
After a swimming lesson I was in the locker room on the bench getting dressed. I looked up and found my face inches away from the butt of a nineteen-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed, buff college swimming coach. He was buck-naked and a hot feeling ran up and down along my backbone and to my chest and down my legs and back to my head. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this man’s butt. I had an urge to reach out and touch it, but of course I didn’t dare. My penis got hard and I covered it with a towel. Maybe there was some connection between the naked man, the tingly feeling inside, and my penis getting hard, but I wasn’t sure. I knew, though, that through no intention of my own, I was attracted to this man’s body.
Slowly, I was learning about the sexual world. One evening while watching the evening news, the anchor talked about something called rape. I had assumed rape was the same as murder, but one night they talked about rape and murder. At the dinner table I asked what the difference was.
Momma gave Daddy a very serious stare and said “Paul, you need to talk to him.”
Daddy called me into his bedroom a few hours later, something he never did. He had an open encyclopedia in his lap. At once, I was frightened and excited. I had long suspected that the world was full of secrets adults hadn’t told me. Now I was about to find out what one of those secrets was.
He pointed to a diagram of a nude male figure and said something about semen and sperm coming out of the penis. Then, he turned to a diagram of a nude female figure and said something about the semen and sperm going into the woman’s opening between her legs. That’s how a baby was made. It was okay for a man and woman to do this if they were married but, if not, they weren’t allowed.
He said that when a man sent the semen and sperm to the woman when she didn’t want it, that was called rape. Daddy explained that when the penis was hard, it couldn’t pee, that that was when the semen and sperm came out. He said that maybe I’d noticed my penis getting hard already when I was around a pretty girl. I nodded even though I hadn’t observed quite that correlation.
I was more puzzled, though, by how the sperm and semen made it from the man’s penis into the opening between the woman’s legs. Daddy had left out a pretty important piece of the puzzle and I was left to my eleven-year-old imagination to fill in the gaps, so to speak. I reached the conclusion that sperm went through the air like hair spray from an aerosol can and found its own way into the woman. What that meant to me was that when my penis got hard, I needed to stay away from the girls.
As I entered puberty, staying away from girls would be the least of my worries.
Considering how many books I read, it’s only natural I would learn the nature of my dad’s omission—“the missing link” of sex—by reading about it. My junior high school history teacher encouraged us to read
Sometimes my penis would get hard and I didn’t know why. I came up with the theory that grown men’s penises were this big and hard all the time and, that since I was growing up, soon mine would be big and hard like this all the time. That didn’t seem very comfortable but if every man in the world dealt with it, so could I.
I also remember my second sexual attraction. All the boys in my sixth grade class took swimming lessons. I felt a strange sense of excitement inside me about changing clothes in the locker room with them, but I didn’t have a clue what that excitement meant, where it came from, or what it was about.
After a swimming lesson I was in the locker room on the bench getting dressed. I looked up and found my face inches away from the butt of a nineteen-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed, buff college swimming coach. He was buck-naked and a hot feeling ran up and down along my backbone and to my chest and down my legs and back to my head. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this man’s butt. I had an urge to reach out and touch it, but of course I didn’t dare. My penis got hard and I covered it with a towel. Maybe there was some connection between the naked man, the tingly feeling inside, and my penis getting hard, but I wasn’t sure. I knew, though, that through no intention of my own, I was attracted to this man’s body.
Slowly, I was learning about the sexual world. One evening while watching the evening news, the anchor talked about something called rape. I had assumed rape was the same as murder, but one night they talked about rape and murder. At the dinner table I asked what the difference was.
Momma gave Daddy a very serious stare and said “Paul, you need to talk to him.”
Daddy called me into his bedroom a few hours later, something he never did. He had an open encyclopedia in his lap. At once, I was frightened and excited. I had long suspected that the world was full of secrets adults hadn’t told me. Now I was about to find out what one of those secrets was.
He pointed to a diagram of a nude male figure and said something about semen and sperm coming out of the penis. Then, he turned to a diagram of a nude female figure and said something about the semen and sperm going into the woman’s opening between her legs. That’s how a baby was made. It was okay for a man and woman to do this if they were married but, if not, they weren’t allowed.
He said that when a man sent the semen and sperm to the woman when she didn’t want it, that was called rape. Daddy explained that when the penis was hard, it couldn’t pee, that that was when the semen and sperm came out. He said that maybe I’d noticed my penis getting hard already when I was around a pretty girl. I nodded even though I hadn’t observed quite that correlation.
I was more puzzled, though, by how the sperm and semen made it from the man’s penis into the opening between the woman’s legs. Daddy had left out a pretty important piece of the puzzle and I was left to my eleven-year-old imagination to fill in the gaps, so to speak. I reached the conclusion that sperm went through the air like hair spray from an aerosol can and found its own way into the woman. What that meant to me was that when my penis got hard, I needed to stay away from the girls.
As I entered puberty, staying away from girls would be the least of my worries.
Considering how many books I read, it’s only natural I would learn the nature of my dad’s omission—“the missing link” of sex—by reading about it. My junior high school history teacher encouraged us to read
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