Just Off Center

I was ten years old when I got my first boner. My buddy Kyle and I were on recess drawing anatomically poor renditions of the naked female form. We had no idea why we were doing this. We just had to do it as though we were cavemen chiseling huge, perfectly round boobies in the slate walls of our Catholic elementary school. Kyle asked me if these things gave me a "boner". I had no idea what a boner was. In all probability I had probably had several of them, but simply didn't realize it. At that age anything that didn't help me in my pursuit of building the perfect Lego creation didn't warrant much attention. Kyle was able to explain to me what was going on as best as another ten year old could. During a sleepover that next weekend he showed me his father's magazine collection, my introduction to the true beauty of the female form.

Page after page we flipped in awe of these mysterious creatures as we sat on his bed with the lights out and a green Army flashlight in hand. The layouts were much the same then as they are now. The first page or two would show a woman who could have been our mothers' age wearing a slip or scarf or some other garment. The point was that her naughty little bits were covered, so we flipped right past. The rest of the layout showed these representations of physical beauty nude and unashamed, posing in all manner of unnatural contortions.

The boners were always there, but that didn't matter because at that age we didn't know what the hell to do with them anyway. At least I didn't. It didn't seem at all wrong to be sitting on a bed with your best friend when you both had little preteen woodies. Most of the girls in thes pictures were looking at me. Some were touching themselves. Some were touching each other! And in a few magazines the girls had close-up pics of them stretching apart and opening the flesh around their...their...well we didn't really even have a name for it back then. And we certainly had no idea why it was quickly becoming an obsession. These photos made up my first memories of nudity and sex.

Several years later, around age 14, I was well aware that the girls in my class were now beginning to look very similar to the women in those magazines. Maybe I just hadn't been looking before, but they seemed to be swelling up in certain areas, while staying the same in others. They were growing taller than me and those Catholic schoolgirl uniforms were hanging on them very differently. Not only were their bodies changing, but so was their behavior. They were no longer huddling together on the playground to tell secrets, utterly isolating themselves from the boys. Now they were still whispering in each other's ears, but they were looking directly at us. They were grouping together to watch us play our recess sports. And they started to "like" us as word traveled through lunch line and the passed note. This was strange to me because they were still completely laden with cooties.

Going to bed that year, I began to notice that my thoughts were strolling away from blacktop fights and soccer field glory. Now there were just stationary images in my head of the girls in my class, some of whom I didn't like at all. They didn't move at all. Perhaps my mind didn't know what they were supposed to be doing, so it just imagined them still. I wasn't touching them or talking. And I couldn't get their faces and bodies out of my head. The erections were back and they were beginning to affect my schoolwork. They popped up randomly throughout the day. And each night I would slip into bed and there it would be, as swollen and sensitive as ever. I began to play around with it out of sheer curiosity. What the hell was causing this condition? Why did it feel different to touch it at this state than it did any other time? Should I ask the school nurse?

Within a week of touching it deliberately I had my first orgasm. It scared the living shit out of me and I didn't touch it again for over a month. I had discovered that if I grabbed it and pulled upward that this strange feeling begin to overtake me. It took several days of bringing myself to the brink and stopping out of fear before I committed to discovering this unknown region of my body's functionality. I decided that whatever was about to happen it couldn't happen in bed. It definitely felt that there was something that wanted out, and I couldn't risk letting my mother find it, so I moved into the bathtub. Whatever it was, it could be drained away with the bath water. And so I went all out, despite the splashing noises coming from my movements. And what happened next terrified me for weeks.

I had gotten to a point close to that before, but I always stopped. But this time, instead of just feeling a linear progression of the sensation, it seemed to be increasing exponentially. I couldn't hear, I couldn't think. I was in the grips of some great pressure and I couldn't decide if it was hurting me or hugging me. It felt like I was trying to piss, but it was difficult like using rusted out pipes that hadn't been used in decades. And in an instant it subsided. It took me a few seconds before I could open my eyes again. And what I saw forced me to leap out of the tub as though I had just noticed a copperhead snake writhing around next to me. I could only think to myself "what the hell is that!?!?" I drained the tub, scrubbed it down, dressed, and left the bathroom feeling confused and a little frightened.

I couldn't touch myself like that for over a month. By that time I was 15 and falling in love with my first real girlfriend. As we fumbled around with each other's body I realized that if I wanted to seem like a real man, I was going to have to face up to my fears and try that tugging thing again. If there was any more left in there I needed to get it out before she decided to start touching it for herself. I just knew she'd dump me if she saw it. And so began a lifetime of self-exploration, a path we all take alone, and sometimes without the knowledge that anybody else is going through it too.

In retrospect, it seems to me that a great majority of this awkwardness and fear could have been easily averted with just a couple of candid parent/child talks. I never got the "birds and the bees". My budding sexuality was met with silence, feigned ignorance, and the occasional disapproving look when my mother would find a wad of soiled toilet paper I had forgotten to flush. I also find it strange that my, and so many other boys', first image of sexuality was in men's adult magazines, some of which containing rather disturbing pictures of women holding themselves open or getting busy with other women. Perhaps there's some clue to our weird little ways in there.

Anyway, I wrote this because I think my experience was a lot more difficult and embarrassing than it needed to be, and also out of curiosity of whether or not anybody else had a similar experience. Of course the girls go through something altogether different, but perhaps they can read this and know that they weren't the only ones with awkwardness or fear, even disgust. But then, maybe it means nothing and will have no impact at all. It is just a blog.