The Best Little Boy in the World (3 page)

But I have really gotten ahead of myself because, as I say, the remarkable thing wasn't the orgasm itself, but why it had taken me so long to have one.

Let me dispel one hypothesis immediately. I was
not
one of those children who were taught from the first hint of puberty that masturbation was evil, that my thing would fall off if I did it, that my mind would turn to cornflakes, or that my knees would break out in goobers. You should be embarrassed for even having considered such a hypothesis. In
my
family, one of the things we
never
talked about was that thing down there. Never. As it was the only part of the body we never talked about, as we always kept it covered, and as society just manages to ingrain in every child, without necessarily ever getting explicit, this was a Bad Area. This was an area the BLBITW used for one thing, in private, and one thing only.

So I had no old wives' tales keeping me pent up. It was only a matter of learning how to do it....

Now I imagine many children learn as I did, by accident. Only they stumble sooner. I can't give you an airtight explanation for how I managed to keep my footing so long, but I can offer some guesses.

Foremost must be the situation just described. It was simply no-man's-land. I would no sooner have fooled around with my Bad Area than I would have stuck my finger up my Other Bad Area. In addition, at some point I learned the phrase—I don't know where I heard it, probably counselors in camp—DON'T PLAY WITH YOURSELF. Well, that just confirmed what the BLBITW already knew. He had not yet developed the kind of fine legal mind that could make the distinction between playing with yourself on the Fifth Avenue bus and playing with yourself in bed.

Then there was the general gut feeling that perhaps things were not all right and proper down there. And sure enough, around the age of thirteen—by which time I had become very uncomfortable with the whole subject of that area, its uses, its abuses—I noticed that the left side of that area was bigger and uglier than the right side, and while I tried as hard as I could not to think about it, I was aware deep down that something was out of kilter. Not in my mind, you understand—I haven't gotten to that yet. A real gen-u-ine physical defect.

I could think of no way to avoid my annual medical checkup, without which I would not be admitted to the ninth grade of my high school, the base from which the BLBITW was operating: bringing home the best grades in the class, running mile after mile of cross country, winning citizenship awards—all the things that the BLBITW
must
do to keep his wicker-weave throne—so I simply
had
to go to that checkup, and sure enough, even before he said "cough," the doctor noticed. Okay, Doctor: Notice it, if you must, but for God's sake, ignore it the way I do.... PLEASE don't give it any sort of recognition.

He did far worse than that. He asked me why I hadn't called him when I first noticed it.

Let me give you a moment to let the full force of that mortal blow sink in.

Right?
Why hadn't I told anybody?
Wouldn't that have been the natural, normal, BLBITW thing to do? I mean, are you
hiding
something? ARE YOU HIDING SOMETHING? What's been going
on
down there
anyway?
Hmmmm, you little phony? You're not the BLBITW they think you are, now are you?

Hiding something? Friends, I was hiding EVERYTHING. But I will get to that.

My defense department computer, defective as usual, should have gone ticking along the perimeter of its linear program and stopped with a buzz and a print-out at the optimal solution: Tell a casual, convincing lie: "Gee, Doc, it only got this way a couple of weeks ago, and it hasn't hurt or anything, so since I knew I'd be seeing you today, I just didn't bother to do anything. I hope that's okay?" That's what Chip Morgan would have said, isn't it?

But me? I said the only thing I could think of—nothing—assuming that sooner or later he would start talking again.

He did, explaining that I had a rather routine problem down there—too much blood pumped to the scrotum, which swells it up on the left side and looks a little ugly—but about 10 percent of the male population has it and, unless it begins to bother me, nothing need be done about it. He would call my parents just to let them know about it.

MY PARENTS? Are you out of your mind? What about the confidential relationship between doctor and patient? I could have you dis
barred
for telling my parents! Instead, of course, I just let the film wash over my eyes and did a halfhearted Jackie Gleason hamina-hamina-hamina. To my credit, I did not pass out.

I even made it home. And when my dad asked to see what the doctor had called about—to
see
it—I looked so adolescent-embarrassed that he didn't push it. He may have been the BLBITW, to a lesser extent, in his day, too, which may be why we never talked about these things.

After that experience with the doctor, my Bad Area was unquestionably, more than ever, off limits. I just didn't want to think about it.

So where was I going to learn to jerk off? When was Famous Artists Schools going to start advertising a correspondence course on the subway panels? Well, I might have learned from the birds and bees lecture, but as I say, it was not my father's favorite topic. He made a concerted effort once and got as far as wet dreams and ejaculations—but I finally prevailed upon him to stop. I couldn't take it. Listening would have been admitting I didn't already know it all, which would have seriously called into question my adolescent normality—
everybody
knew that stuff—and the last thing I wanted to do was to call into question my adolescent normality. I mustered one of my rare performances: Oh, Dad! For heaven's sake (which was somehow in an altogether different category from For Crying Out Loud)—
I know all those things.

So I didn't learn to masturbate from him. Even if I had let him continue, I doubt the prescribed text included a chapter on that subject.

Well, what about Goliath, for crying out loud? What are older brothers for? It never occurred to me at the time even to wonder whether he had mastered this art—as I say, I did my best to keep my mind off such subjects—but I found out last year, when we finally got to know each other, that indeed he had been doing it since he was twelve—sometimes right in the next bed from me. Gad.

In fact, it dawned on me after our recent conversation, as I sifted my early years over and over.... that night in the East Side apartment—oh, WOW, of
course!—
there was that night when he kept wiggling his toes against the sheets ever so softly—just loud enough to get on my nerves to keep me awake—and then we started fighting, and I went in to my parents' bedroom to complain—at which he took more than the usual offense, for some reason—but kept wiggling his toes all the same when I returned—my
God!

So I would have had an apt instructor in Goliath, but we didn't have that kind of relationship. Sure, we loved each other. We were
supposed
to love each other, remember, so I certainly did. But ours was not your ail-American Wally-Leave-It-To-Beaver kind of fraternity.

I first went away to overnight camp when I was ten. Goliath was in his third or fourth year at that camp, and a moderate big shot. He knew the tent ropes. I, on the other hand, was only now being cast onto my own resources for the first time and was, as usual, terrified.

Everything was going smoothly until I arrived at my tent and met my counselor, an ex-marine, Olympic swimmer. He told me to make my bed. Fine. I unlocked my trunk, which was miraculously in my tent when I arrived, took out the sheets and such, and began to make the bed.

"Don't forget the rubber mattress cover," the marine said.

"The rubber mattress cover?"

"Yeah. The rubber mattress cover."

I searched diligently for it, though I had never heard of one before and could not remember its being on the list of things—thirty-two white Camp Winnepesaukee handkerchiefs, fourteen pairs white Camp Winnepesaukee athletic socks, one athletic supporter (optional to age thirteen)—we had packed in Brewster, the last time I saw the trunk. I searched knowing I would not find it, that I had failed miserably, that I would be sent home by the next available train, and that I would return home a disgrace to the family. That phony feeling again.

"I don't think I have one. Could I make the bed with this cloth one?"

"You're supposed to have a rubber one. It says here that you wet your bed."

THAT I WHAT? Oh my God, I think he's talking about
that area!
We
never
talk about that area. The last thing I was prepared to do was to talk back to an authority figure, let alone an ex-marine, for crying out loud, but this was the white paint on the lawn all over again. "No, sir, I don't wet my bed." Now, the fact is that maybe once or twice in my life, like any kid, I had wet my bed. But what's going on? Authority figures don't make mistakes. Maybe my parents hadn't had the heart to tell me that I wet my bed and sent me away to have this marine tell me. Have I told a lie—do I really wet my bed? A lie to a
stranger
, no less? But I am ten now, not five—you can see how far I've come—and I am almost certain that I don't wet my bed, that there is some mistake.

We went back and forth a couple of times—No, I don't. It says here you do, but I'll cure you of it soon enough. AGH!—when Goliath happened along. For perhaps the first time in my life I was overjoyed to see Goliath.

I got Goliath to admit his blood relationship with me, and then, oh-so-relieved, I asked him to tell the ex-marine that I did not wet my bed. If anyone knows, it should be you who sleep in the same room with me! F. Lee Bailey couldn't have constructed a stronger defense.

"How should
I
know whether you wet your bed?" That is all Goliath said. He went off to play tennis.

So I wouldn't have learned how to do it from my brother.

I can think of only four possible courses of instruction that remained, three of which I can eliminate out of hand. I could have
read
how to do it somewhere, but the BLBITW didn't start reading dirty books until a couple of years ago. I could have learned from our sex education program in school, but all they told us about was good posture, deodorant, and taking your hat off indoors. I could have learned about it "in the street," but the street in Brewster was a state highway, on which I was not allowed to ride my bicycle, and the street on the East Side was populated primarily by uniformed doormen.

That leaves the general category of friends: in camp, in high school—freshman year in
college,
for crying out loud.

Camp was quite an awakening for me. All of a sudden I had to fend for myself, and the standards by which performance was measured were largely physical rather than academic. Unfair! They are changing ground rules on the BLBITW, who has never even learned to play baseball (how can you play baseball if the only other kid within miles—we had thousand-acre zoning, I think—is always setting the table?)—baseball, the national pastime, the symbol of all that is normal and wholesome.

Having become quite used to being one of the best in my class at whatever I did (multiplication, state capitals), I couldn't bear the embarrassment of standing out there in right field, left out, frightened to death that someone, some stupid lefty crackerjack batter, just
might
slam one out to right field. And there I would be, trembling, knees weak, CHOKING—and miss it.
Everything
is a self-fulfilling prophecy, my fielding being no exception. Invariably, once a game, somebody
had
to hit a ball out there; invariably, I would miss it. So I only played when I had to, one game a year.

My dreaded once a year in right field, as any former camper will have guessed by now, was during color war.
Everybody
had to play. And the last year I played, I must have been about fourteen, my worst nightmare came true.

Sure, I must have missed the inevitable right-field fly—that was so routine I can't even remember it now. But someone up there, the Great Phonifier, had something far more humiliating in mind for the BLBITW. It was the bottom of the ninth, in our seven-inning game, with our side one run down, the bases loaded, two outs, and a three-and-two count. (I
swear
I am not exaggerating.) Need I tell you who the three-and-two count was
on?

I'll give you a hint. It wasn't Goliath. Nor was it Tommy Roth, the camp charisma, the fifteen-year-old whose friendship and respect I sought in every way I could. Tommy was on the
other
team. And now, at fourteen, while I was hardly the camp charisma, I had become a color-war force to be reckoned with. I won all my swimming events, I led the relay, I won my tennis match on a 16-14 set, I shot a 94 on my ten-bull—and while Tommy was doing all these things in
his
age group, he was also leading the team sports. Like baseball.

Tommy had come down to watch this game, with most of the rest of the camp, because the five color-war points that rested on it were becoming increasingly important to the outcome of the entire war. Tommy, of course, had not said a word to me for the past four days—this was war, after all—and was now a few yards away, laughing at me, and at how I was going to CHOKE! CHOKE! and blow the whole thing. HEY, ADAM'S APPLE!
CHOKE!

Meanwhile, of course, my team captain—not the baseball team captain, mind you, though he was there, too—the
color-war
captain, and the
head coach
, for crying out loud, were telling me to take it easy: The poor pitcher was under tremendous pressure, was going to CHOKE!, and all I had to do was watch the ball closely and only swing on the off-chance that it came anywhere near the plate. A walk with the bases loaded would tie the score, and our big guns were up right behind me. WALK'S AS GOOD AS A HIT!, HEY, PITCH-CHOKE!, FLY'S DOWN, PITCH!, WALK'S AS GOOD AS A HIT!