Foolish Fire (3 page)

I tried out all the rooms of the house as if each new place were a variation of the same act, a new and different spicing…in my parents’ bedroom, in my sister’s room, in the living room, in my father’s den with its musty smell of old books and the rubbery smell of scuba diving equipment. I did it in the kitchen sink, running the tap to wash away the evidence. I did it in the garage where I could hear people passing by just outside. One time I did it in a neighbor’s house when I had to use their bathroom.

On the school bus I furtively stroked myself with my hand in my pocket while girls chatted just a seat away…and in class under my desk while the teacher wrote upon the blackboard, stopping just short of too late. (And how I wished I could go all the way without ejaculating!) I did it in the boys’ room where the privacy of a stall offered me a mad moment of delight snatched in the middle of the school day, often with boys just outside.

I did it the first thing in the morning as soon as I was up—for I almost always woke to a stiff erection. I did it at night among the bushes in my backyard where no one could spot me. I did it right in the hallway of my home in broad daylight during the two or three minutes in which my mom used the toilet. The element of danger, the risk of getting caught gave the act a special sense of urgency.

Normally one session was enough to leave me feeling sated for a while—or rather, free me from the tension of thinking about it all the time, giving me a temporary respite from my addiction. However, I sometimes felt like testing my endurance by doing it three, four, five times a day, pushing myself to my limits. One Saturday when I had the house to myself, I managed, by spacing them out, a record-breaking eight times—until I was “shooting blanks,” coming without any discharge—pushed on by a dogged determination to dredge to the roots of my obsession and be freed of it once and for all.

Sometimes I felt guilty about doing it so often. I thought of the whispered warnings about what happened when a boy did it too much and would go through a period of repentance when I vowed to quit once and for all. It never lasted long, however. At night I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. When I did manage to drop off, it was a restless slumber broken by intermittent wakefulness. And as the night progressed, I found myself pulling off my pajamas, then my underwear, until I was completely nude beneath the sheets, feverish with unsatisfied longing.

These attempts at chastity always ended up with a guilty half-hearted fondling which very quickly modulated into a furious pumping. I discovered to my amazement that these periods of abstention only served to increase my eventual pleasure. The climax was positively gut-wrenching, leaving me so shattered that I was momentarily unable or unwilling to even lift a hand to clean off my befouled face.

And so I sometimes purposely imposed these periods of celibacy to heighten my enjoyment of an increasingly routine act.

*

For the boys in seventh grade, body hair was still the definitive sign of physical maturity, and those of us who didn’t even have pubic hair yet would cover our genitals in shame every time we took our showers in PE.

I felt more and more depressed each time I spotted another boy in the locker room sporting a shy new smudge of down-like pubic hair. In the steamy haze of the showers these boys were like newly-hatched chicks showing off their first badges of manhood, proud of their fledgling adult status. By the spring term of seventh grade, fully half of the boys had “arrived.” I lived with the fear that I would never join them; the sight of my own smooth, baby-bare pubis was a constant source of humiliation.

Every morning after tumbling out of bed, the first thing I did was examine myself, running a hopeful finger over my pubis. Always there was nothing—only bare skin…detestable girl-smooth skin.

Finally, one morning I received my first sign of hope. I was still half asleep in bed when I caught myself rubbing a vague itch. When I realized what I was doing, I sat bolt upright. “It’s coming,” I thought. Throwing off my covers, I pulled my pajama bottoms down. In the early morning light nothing looked changed, yet I could somehow sense that it was arriving at last, the pubic hair for which I’d practically given up hope.

Every morning after that I tenderly caressed with my fingertips the harvest of downy fuzz which grew there, imagining I could see it getting thicker by the day. Then one morning, to my elation, I definitely spotted minuscule shoots of hair like scattered blades of grass shyly breaking the soil.

Day by day—almost before my very eyes, it seemed—the hairs grew thicker, spreading out their fine spider-web filigrees of soft brown through which the skin could still be glimpsed. No longer would I have to hold my bath towel shyly in front of me as I crept toward the showers. I could now drape it boldly around my neck as I strolled around the locker room. And I could take my time in the showers from now on, soaping myself as unselfconsciously as the others did.

With the first sign of maturity upon me I felt as if I had been vouchsafed a promise of all the others still to come, the rest of my masculine birthright: greater height, a voice change, underarm hair, a beard. Yes, there were two or three boys in class who already shaved. How I envied them, with a yearning virtually indistinguishable from worship. I always felt a thrill of delight each time these boys, in the showers, raised an arm to scrub their backs, brazenly exposing a lovely underarm bush beaded with tiny, shivering, transparent drops of water.

The musty smell these boys left on their clothes, that briny aroma which lingered in their T-shirts in PE class, was an exotic perfume for me. I often lowered my nose toward my own armpit trying to evoke it. Sometimes when I was clowning around with a friend I would sniff his underarm like an animal and pretend to be offended by the odor, fanning the air in front of my face and holding my nose. But the truth was—and I never dared admit it to anyone—I found that masculine smell very arousing.

*

It was Saturday afternoon and there was no one home. My parents had gone to see a movie with my sister so I knew I had the house all to myself for the next three hours. It was raining outside and I couldn’t play baseball with my friends. But I had no desire to leave the house.

I made sure the front door was locked, then made my way to my parents’ room. The full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door was like a portal opening into a whole new world of pleasures….

I stood before the mirror just looking at myself for a while. Then gradually I let my mind go blank in order to slip more easily into my fantasy. Narrowing my eyes to create a hazy effect with my lashes, I imagined that my reflection was another boy, a complete stranger, upon whom I was spying, and who was ignorant of my presence.

Keeping an oblique image of him in view, I slowly began to undress, watching him go through the same motions. I saw him peel out of his shirt and unbuckle his belt, letting his pants slide down to his ankles. There he stood, clad in nothing but his cotton briefs, with an uncertain look upon his face, a loose pile of clothes scattered about his feet.

We regarded each other with looks of mutual admiration mingled with an irresistible coyness…self-consciously running our fingers through our hair, trying to act nonchalant. At some point he’d begun caressing his own chest and shoulders, then gently kneading his buttocks over his briefs.

Finally—after some time had passed…time enough to create an unbearable tension of expectancy and longing—we both stooped slightly and, in one motion, shyly stepped out of our briefs. As this last barrier was removed, I caught my breath at the sight offered so wantonly to my eyes. Though he tried clumsily to hide it, I could see the erection blossoming behind his concealing fingers.

Without looking at his face for fear of breaking the mood, I continued to gaze in admiration at his body. And as if he were consciously gratifying this desire, he turned his body this way and that, proudly showing it off, allowing me to view it from every possible angle: the thrilling side view of the steep-angled erection; the front view which displayed the clean taper from chest to waist, the smooth belly, the wispy bush from which protruded the engorged shaft; and the back view (for which I had to use a small, hand-held mirror) which showed the tight roundness of both buttocks and the enticing cleft where they met.

After this silent pantomime we gradually approached each other, shyly reaching out our hands…and touched fingertips. I ran my finger across the reflection, then brought my body closer until my erection was touching his, tip to tip, then pressed flat. The cool smooth barrier prevented me from moving my whole body into his—I wished I could merge completely with him.

Looking up suddenly I saw his face from up close—so close I couldn’t recognize his features. I brought my lips to his in a cool smooth kiss…a kiss which could never touch. I squirmed against him, frustrated by the limits of reality…and broke the delicate web of fantasy. The mirror was just too smooth and cool and flat.

I backed the lower half of my body away and saw that the other boy, too, could no longer restrain himself. He had gripped himself, and his balled fist was a furious blur. I concentrated upon his face and watched it go through all the usual stages: first, an intent, serious look, the pink tip of his tongue visible between biting teeth; then the stupid slack look as the tides of pleasure rose, the eyelids growing heavy; then the silly smile as the rapid approach was glimpsed, the sap rising till a trickle leaked from the brimming tip; and then the teeth bared like a growling dog’s, the neck muscles corded in tension, the nose wrinkled, the entire face contorted as if wracked by acute pain; and finally a momentary blankness as my whole body was jolted by spasms of the purest, most delicious pleasure…spinning rainbows out into black, black space; and immediately after, the face visible again, looking pale and drawn, ashen and wasted.

My heart pounding violently, I dully watched as several fat gobs of pearly spit slowly crawled down the surface of the mirror. Inside my mind, the thunderclap’s echo was rolling away, dying, but my body was still tingling and shivering from its violent galvanization.

The boy in the mirror, guilt stamped on every feature, rushed into his clothes with an urgency that bordered on panic.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I was up in the Fort with my cousin Bobby. The Fort was a tree house in my backyard I’d built with the help of my dad. Actually, my dad had started out by helping me build it, but growing impatient with my incompetence, had taken over the job himself, grimly, expertly hammering the boards into place, stepping back to survey his handiwork while I stood off to one side watching it get built. I’d never been mechanically minded, nor handy with tools, and I only felt in his way whenever we worked together on something.

Ever since it got built, the Fort was the place I liked to escape to, especially in the summer. I even slept in it sometimes, feeling like a boy drifting on a raft downstream. Naturally, whenever Bobby came for a visit, we would come up here as much as possible.

Every June, at the start of summer vacation, it was a custom for his family to visit us for about a week before proceeding on to the coast. His mother and mine were very close as sisters, and our fathers had gone to the same college. Bobby and I were exactly the same age. He was the brother I’d always wanted, and we played together like long lost siblings during the one week allotted to us each summer. Every year we picked up our friendship as if there’d been no interval since the last visit.

Safely ensconced in the Fort’s shady solitude, soft drinks and comic books on the wooden floor beside us, we gazed down upon the rooftops of the neighborhood through a shifting curtain of leafy green, pretending we were on the swaying deck of a ship at sea or in the gondola of a fabulous lighter-than-air balloon which was just skimming the treetops. It was easy to shut out the entire world, simply by pulling the canvas flap at the door shut, and sitting cross-legged on the creaking floorboards.

Bobby kicked his legs out over the side. We’d been talking about our just-finished first year of junior high school, and how different it had been from elementary school.

“I don’t know about your school, Guy, but it seems that the boys in my school only have one thing on their minds: girls. Yuck.”

“I know. It seems like that’s all they care about anymore. Last year they wouldn’t be caught dead talking to them.”

“Everybody’s changing so much. Getting so stuck up and stuff. I wish we could go back to the days when everybody was reading comic books and trading them.”

“Yeah. Those were the good old days. But you can’t go back, you know. Changing is normal.”

“Oh yeah? Well I don’t know about you, but I’m never gonna be any different than I am now.”

“Come on, Bobby, not all the changes are bad. There’s some that are pretty good.”

“Oh? Like what, for instance?”

“You know….”

“No, I don’t. What?”

I looked at him. Bobby had always been a late bloomer, a little slow to catch on to things. For all I knew, he might not even have discovered masturbation yet. In order to find out for sure, I started talking about something completely different, but making veiled references to it, weaving phrases like “doing it,” or “wrist action” or “shooting off” into my talk, with obvious emphasis. He laughed along good-naturedly, sensing a joke but not quite getting it, with a hint of lostness in his face—and I took a malicious delight in this subtle needling.

“Come on, Guy, what are you laughing about? Are you making fun of me?”

“No. It’s just that you’re so innocent.”

“What’s wrong with that? Why should I feel ashamed because I’m not as smart as you? Good grades aren’t everything, you know.”

“No, dum-dum. I’m talking about the facts of life. Sex and that kind of stuff.”

“Oh.” He fell silent. “You mean like dirty jokes and stuff. If you want to know the truth, I just don’t like those kinds of jokes.”

“Maybe it’s because you don’t get them. If you don’t understand the punch line, it won’t make any sense to you.”

He shook his head vehemently. “No, I mean they’re all so stupid. Like this one joke about a man with a ten-foot long dick. It’s so long it reaches all the way up to the ceiling. He trains his pet monkey to climb up it but the monkey keeps slipping down. Or something like that. It’s a dumb joke.” His voice trailed off and he looked truly lost.

“Don’t worry, Bobby, it’ll come to you someday.”

He made a face, then turned to me with a serious expression. “Guy, what’s all this about ‘beating off?’ I heard some guys talking about it once, but they wouldn’t tell me.”

My suspicion was confirmed: he knew nothing. And it made me feel so superior. “You mean to tell me you don’t
know
?”

He shook his head, big-eyed. “What is it?” he whispered.

I smiled mysteriously with the smug look of one who knows all the secrets of the universe. “Boy, are you dumb.”

“Come on, Guy, tell me.” Then with a suspicious look on his face: “Do
you
know?”

“Of course I do.”

It was delightful to savor the immense gap I felt suddenly yawn between us. Leaning back, I laced my fingers together and cupped my palms behind my head. After peering up through the cracks in the roof at the patterns of leaf and sky beyond, I hesitated for a moment, then said: “You know what? I don’t think you know anything about anything.”

A worried look crossed his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, about sex. Where babies come from. And how babies are made. That kind of stuff.”

“Oh, I know all that. We saw a film about it in hygiene class.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “The woman gets pregnant when the man puts his dick inside her. There was a cartoon explaining it all.”

“Yeah, we saw the same thing. What a laugh. The cartoons made it all seem so mechanical, like pieces of a machine fitting together. No mention about how good it feels.”

“How do
you
know how it feels?”

“Because it probably feels a lot like beating off.”

“Oh.” He looked perplexed.

I grew impatient. “Listen, ‘beating off’ is just another term for masturbation.”

“Masturbation?”

“Yes, dum-dum. That’s when you make yourself
come
. You know what I mean by ‘come,’ don’t you?”

His face fell a little. “Yeah,” he said evasively, his voice getting weaker. He seemed to sense that the talk was getting into dangerous territory. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Do you really?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then tell me,” I taunted. I saw the look of panic which flitted across his face quickly replaced by an uncertain attempt at casualness. I pressed on: “I bet you never even did it.”

“Did what?”

“You know. With yourself.”

He hesitated, then—as if offended—shot back, “Sure I did.”

“Oh yeah? Then how do you do it?”

“The same way as everybody else, I guess.”

“How does everyone do it?”

“I don’t know how
every
one does it. You’ll have to ask everyone.” Then he countered triumphantly: “How do
you
do it, Guy?”

Now it was my turn to hesitate. I was weighing the alternatives: to keep him in the dark and continue to needle him, or be the one to divulge the mystery, to initiate him into the secret brotherhood. My choice was clear.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Then listen.”

My throat was dry and my stomach felt cool and weighty. I could almost feel Bobby’s trembling excitement as if we were linked by invisible sparks jumping across the space between us. I swallowed, then went on in a low voice:

“You know how your dick sometimes gets hard and points straight up, like this?” With my index finger, I imitated a penis coming to erection with a series of short, quick jerks.

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you ever touch yourself when it was like that?”

“I guess so.”

“I mean,” I said impatiently, “touch yourself in the way they call ‘beating off?’ You know….”

Ringing my fingers around a phantom penis in the air before me I demonstrated with a rapid up-and-down jogging of my wrist.

Bobby’s face blanched. He wore a look of awe and horror mixed with fascination, as if he were witnessing something sinful and forbidden. In the silence we could hear the children in the next yard calling and squealing to each other.

I tisked with scorn. “God, I can’t believe how dumb you are. All the kids do it. That’s what they’re talking about. Didn’t you
know
?”

He remained silent with a look of queasy stoicism.

“You keep doing it like this, and pretty soon it starts to feel real good. That’s when it shoots out.”

“It
shoots
out?”

“Yeah.” I made a rasping noise with my lips and traced the arc of a trajectory with my finger, landing on his lap.

“Gross!” He drew away in disgust.

“It doesn’t feel gross when you’re doing it. It feels good.”

“How does it feel? Sort of tickle?”

“I can’t describe it. It…it’s just the best feeling in the world. There’s nothing in the world like it. Nothing even comes close.” Then with a suggestive grin I added, “Why don’t you try it?”

He shook his head and backed away a little. “No way. Forget it.” He looked shocked and embarrassed, even slightly sick—and I felt a twinge of cruel delight.

“Do it tonight in the shower,” I urged confidentially. “No one can see you.”

“No way. I’m not a sissy like you are.”

“What do you mean? Everyone does it. Besides…I thought you said you did it, too.”

“Not like that,” he said in a last desperate attempt to regain his dignity. “I do it different.”

“Sure you do….”

“If you don’t believe me, I’m leaving.”

“Don’t worry, I believe you. Who said I didn’t believe you?” But the look on my face must have clearly indicated skepticism, for his expression turned defiant. “Okay, Bobby, forget it. I was just kidding you. Come on, let’s read these comics. Just like the old days.”

“All right.”

*

That night as I sat on my bed, Bobby came running from the bathroom where he’d been taking a shower. With a look of wild joy on his face, he came bounding over to me like a playful puppy, almost bowling me over in his exuberance. Dancing, laughing, he threw playful punches at my face, slapping and pounding my back so happily that I had to fight him off.

“So you did it, huh?” I said in a low voice.

He denied it vehemently, but his attitude gave him away. He couldn’t keep from jumping up and down.

I pushed him away. “Cut it out.” Then I asked in a whisper, “How did it feel?”

“Great!” he shouted. Then in an excited whisper he described how he’d panicked initially at the onset of the strange new feeling, but remembering my words, had continued on until he’d been overwhelmed by the most delicious feeling in the world.

“You should have seen the shower wall! But I didn’t even care!”

In his zeal he began illustrating by pumping his fist furiously in front of his pelvis.

“Stop it!” I hissed. “What if someone sees you?”

“Ooops!” He slapped a hand over his mouth and put on a comically contrite look.

“Nothing in the world feels as good, right?”

“Yeah.” After he calmed down, he began to talk seriously about certain dreams he’d been having for the past several months. Though he couldn’t quite remember their contents, he did have vague, half-forgotten memories of melting bliss. That was what his experience in the shower had reminded him of, and he’d felt an eerie sensation of recapturing that dream feeling.

“It’s called a wet dream,” I said. “You were coming in your sleep even before you knew what coming was.”

“Why does that happen?”

“The pressure builds up if you don’t let it out every now and then. It’s nature’s way of relieving you.”

“I always felt a little scared. I didn’t even realize I was wetting my pants. It was always dry in the morning.”

“At first not much comes out. Then more and more does.”

“How come you know so much?”

“I read it in a book called
What Every Boy Should Know
. That book tells you everything. And it’s right in the school library, too. Me and Jack are always peeking into it.

“Is that where you learned about beating off?”

“No. I discovered that by accident one day.”

“Guy, where do you usually do it?”

“Right here on the bed. About where you’re lying.”

He quickly shifted away from the spot and I laughed. Then he asked me with a straight face: “What do you do with your come?”

“When I’m ready to come I roll to the side of the bed and do it onto the floor.”

He glanced downward.

“Don’t worry, I always clean it up.”