Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 12:59:32 -0700 From: Bob Stardog105 Subject: My Sexual Childhood 3: To Middle School After the worrisome encounter with Johnny in the garage there was a major gap in my sexual expression. Several things happen to muddy the timeline. First I was quickly put into Catholic school and the following year, in the middle of a term, quickly pulled out of it. This experience, as anyone who has had daily contact with nuns can tell you, was not conducive to any self expression let alone a sexual one. All my school buddies were as equally cowed as me. Also I must say that there does seem to be a sort of maturing process to sexual development that lends itself to a break, where exploration is not a part or a major concern of childhood in the years just before puberty. Anyway while I went from school to school and lost and gained new classmates not much happened. A little, but not much. I remember that a small group of my class mates would go into the playground at recess and sit down to pretend to play, doing paths etc in the dirt to represent an innocent interest while we were in fact trading smutty stories or other sexual tidbits. Example. (forgive the lack of um sophistication) A drunk woman fell into a gutter where 3 fleas landed on her looking for shelter. They decided to each explore in a different direction and report back what they found. Some time passed and they all returned, none too happy. The first one said: "I walked and walked until I found a little dip but there was nothing in the bottom of it. [her navel, the joke-teller elucidated]" The second flea said: "Well I went in the opposite direction and found a big dark cave [her ass, we were told] but when I went inside a big brown bear came down and chased me out." The third chimed in: "That's nothing I went into a small cave. It was warm inside but then a bald headed bastard showed up and squirted buttermilk all over me." The speaker did not name the anatomy of this third place but the squirting buttermilk (also left unexplained) and the use of a curse word ("bastard") seemed so silly we, including me, were sent into wild spasms of giggles there on the playground, hardly recovering before the bell rang for us to go back inside. blue belly I was probably told this story by another student, just the two of us at lunch or recess. He might not have been part of the play circle who did the stage setting so as to share dirty jokes. It was told to me, presumably, as a way of introduction to the school and class at the time I was still "new." The school had off limits grounds to one side where no one monitored what sort of rough play went on. For reasons not told or possibly told but now forgotten a boy was taken "prisoner" by two classmates out there, away from view. One large boy was able to pin the prisoner's arms in such a way that he could not mover or get release. The other boy then pulled the prisoner's shirt up to expose his bare stomach. Very carefully but firmly he patted the boy's stomach. He kept doing this no matter how much the boy struggled to be let lose or turn away. Just kept patting him in the same spot. His belly became redder and redder from the insistent force of the pats. It became so red that blood vessels broke and the skin showed blue, my tale-spinner went on. And that was how a boy would get a blue belly. I'm sure I wondered about it at the time. Did not believe it but the idea of a boy held down and "worked on" by another boy certainly was a novelty in my mind. Now I see it as a metaphor for forced masturbation, but no telling what my classmate's intention was in relaying it to me. Later he might have mentioned something to me about sexual parts ("wieners") in an encounter in the boy's lavatory, but I certainly did not presume this was anything more than silliness. Away from the all-knowing, all-seeing nuns, my school career became much more rough and tumble. This was also the time when boys seem to really become fixated on sports of all kinds and of course on winning and showing off in sports. As months and then school years rolled by I found myself lagging further and further behind in all the skills that were now so critical to social success in boy groups. I could not run as fast, throw as far, hit as hard as other kids my age. I would be one of the last chosen for a team, always a good indicator of social status. I was less and less interested in sports as well. I concentrated more on studies, and staying out of the way of what were to become in high school the jocks. To sort of finalize the curse of my new school and its rapidly unattainable standards I was now in a class with Johnny who, for reasons beyond me, did all he could to either avoid me or make my life difficult. family My parents made a conscious effort to avoid any personal or intimate subjects in my hearing. I suppose they thought that ignorance would be like a great bubble surrounding me, protecting me from all the things evil. It was truly an intellectual chastity belt. It did not work. (In fact it could have been designed for the very opposite effect to get me to a refined state of perfect sensitivity to the smallest sexual stimuli.) At some time early on (meaning here 10 or 11) I found a baby care book stuffed among clothes in an unused dresser drawer. Its being out of place was an invitation to open it. At one of the back chapter headings was the subject of sex education for children, or at least what passed for education back then. I can't remember much of anything in it other than an admonition to use medical terms when discussing hygiene, and a list: penis, vagina, foreskin, circumcision, scrotum, etc. These words were revelations to me. I was surprised they could be written. Guess I suspected the book would have incinerated on the spot from them. It was like a different world opened. Something that of course it did. Something I'd been guarded to keep me from. I put the book back where I'd found it, revisiting the drawer at a safe (unwatched) moment later in the week. The book had been removed, never to be found by me again. This confirmed to me that the knowledge in it, just the words in it, were supposed to be too harmful for me to see. These formal words also had a secondary reference to me, a tie-in to a great power, physicians. My mom was chronically ill and talk of doctors and visiting doctors was a huge part of my growing up. Doctors were a part of a second level of existence, they held power over people, could do anything to them, give them shots, make them undress, anything they wanted. I early on decided that when I grew up I wanted to be a doctor too. So using their words about the body was all a part of my idea of what I would be later in life. (Certainly a major theme in my sex fantasy and real life has been the use of power, the abject control over someone for their own good certainly equals my childhood image of being a doctor.) I used to draw over and over with crayons the inner cavity of the human body showing heart, lungs, intestine. It was like study to me. Very young I remember being taken from the bath to be dried on the bed. I made reference to my testicles saying that for sure they were my kidneys since they were part of the urinary tract. My somewhat flustered parents disputed this but gave no alternate function. I was sure they were in error, these must be my kidneys. Also very young my parents had noticed a swelling of one testicle and taken me to a doctor who suggested ice packs. This was awkward and uncomfortable treatment, laying down holding a pack in place, but probably inspired a lot of my interest in testes/scrotum reactions later on. Two further incidents when I was 10-11, both with my dad, tend to have developed reverberations in my future life. I was seated on the toilet with constipation problem. It began to hurt and I yelled for my dad to come in it was so bad. He went down on his knees in front of me steadying my legs as I worked through the painful BM. Without explanation to me my dad was tasked by my mother to come into the bathroom one time while I was drying to check to see how clean my penis was under the foreskin. I erected though did not recognize it as such once he began pulling the skin back. It hurt and I began crying. He was very patient with me, taking back more of the skin until it was at the edge of the corona. I got scared and said that it was like if the skin came back any more then the head would fall off like a loose marble. I sobbed, tears rolling down my cheeks. The poor guy persevered. I was retracted, to his relief and my shock. I suppose my parents through that the one lesson was enough. It was not repeated, gratefully That was the total education my parents brought to me over any sexual aspect. When I grew, when I had the opportunity, I would get into positions and activities identical to these two incidents with younger partners, re-enact what my dad had done with me. It was like a way of finding myself in the junior partner. It was a great pleasure. Questions, comments, your experience welcomed. Send to: stardog105@hotmail.com