Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:40:38 -0800 (PST) From: The Paternal Watcher Subject: My Junior High 1 I thought I was prepared for seventh grade. I was twelve years old, had to remember my locker combination and where all my classes were, not to mention all of the homework I was not responsible for. There was a lot more freedom, including where to sit during lunch and who to become friends with. My first two days at lunch were enough to make me realize how over my head I really was. Sure, I had read the books I had discovered in the downstairs den on the bookshelf in the corner, the ones that told me all about what sex was. I couldn't quite grasp why any guy would want to put his penis in a vagina, but I understood the basics. The books even touched on masturbation, but it sounded like something that I might try out one of these days, but not yet. One thing I learned is that erections can be caused by all sorts of things, including cold. Since my boners were pretty much random and not tied to anything in the outside world, I started exercising my young dick by dipping it in a cup of cold water every night before bed. Sure enough, the damned thing got hard, every time. I enjoyed the feeling of control I had, and the hard-ons felt pretty good, too. But the boys at the lunch table, what they were talking about was way past boners and babies. AJ, one of the tough kids, had invited me to sit with them because he figured I was smart and could help him with his homework. I learned a lot more than he did, though. "I had my finger right in her," he told the throng at the table. All of us were hanging on every word, while doing our best to seem completely disinterested. "I couldn't get it past the first knuckle because she had on these tight pants, so I told her, 'Your pants are too tight.' You know what she did?" He looked around to see if anyone had the answer before continuing, "She stood up and pulled them right off." My mind was bursting with this new idea, that you could do a whole lot more with your body than even that mysterious set of books had taught me. Being prepared for pubic hair and deodorant wasn't going to cut it in this environment. I was scared, because I had no idea what junior high had in store for me. The idea of growing pubic hair had been more of a shock than the knowledge of intercourse (which, at the beginning of seventh grade, I didn't know was the same as "fucking"). The four-volume set of biology books my mother had surreptitiously slipped among the encyclopedias had only confirmed a suspicion I'd already had; pubic hair was an inevitable sign of growing up. I both loved and loathed the idea of pubic hair: I wanted very much to understand adult secrets, but I was also extremely fond of my penis and didn't want to lose it under a hairy mess. I was a skinny, hairless white kid, and I was mostly happy being all of those things, so why change it? My family was not one to embrace nudity, and once my mother stopped bathing me and I insisted on taking showers when I was about eight, there almost wasn't any opportunity to see anyone naked. The exception to the was when my elder brother approached me one night when no one else was home, and suggested that he and I play strip poker. I was ten, and he fourteen, so he was unsurprisingly a better poker player than I. Nevertheless, we both were eventually naked, and I was awestruck by his immense member. It stuck straight out at an upward angle from a brown thatch, and seemed too large to support itself under its own weight. I was so impressed by the sight of my brother's erection, which was so much larger than I ever imagined one could possibly be, that a week or so later I asked him if he'd like to play again sometime. He dismissed my request as being "gay," the first time he directed the word at me. I resolved then to find a way to see more naked people, but up until entering junior high, I hadn't come upon a plan that would work. Part of the problem was an intense desire to avoid being ever seen naked again myself. I knew that nakedness was not required for gym class, because no one took showers and no one changed underwear. I still hid in a corner near the emergency exit to change, just to be sure. Seventh grade found me curious about nudity but terrified of being naked; it found me curious about sex, cautious that I wasn't as interested as I was supposed to be, and terrified to ask any questions which would reveal my fatal ignorance. I soon found myself among a group of friends which didn't seem interested in sex, or at least never talked about it, and because of that I felt somewhat relieved. I wouldn't be tested on the mysteries . . . yet.