Can a Boy Ever Know Enough About Sex?

I was in sixth grade when they separated us boys and girls to show us sex education films, one for each gender. My classmates already knew me to turn red and turn away from naughty talk and off-color jokes, so when a few of them taunted me with “Did you learn anything?” after the film was shown, it was not out of sincere interest in my education. I remembered enough details about the movie to find it in recent years. It is Boy to Man (Part 1, Part 2). In retrospect, it was so dry and clinical, it probably shouldn’t have embarrassed me as much as it did. With an internal drawing of the erect penis—the external part of the shaft located almost all off-screen—the newscaster voice says, “During masturbation, a boy may handle his penis to cause an ejaculation.” Masturbation? Handle? Ejaculation? It was all lost on me. The trauma of the subject matter simply overwhelmed me and I avoided absorbing the intended medical information. Frankly, it wasn’t until that summer, in the camp shower, that the sight of my friend’s naked body woke me up to the fact that my dad’s type of “penis hair” could arrive at age 12!  Mine came in the months that followed. With it came my curiosity. No, I didn’t want to participate in a classroom viewing of Boy to Man II: Juicer Stuff, but I had my eyes open for as much sex information as I could lay my hands on.

Boys Who Masturbate

As it turns out, I did not invent masturbation. Oh, sure, you knew that. Well, frankly, I know I’ve known it for a long time, myself, but when I first discovered what a fantastic feeling it was to hold a piece of wood in my lap while I worked on it with an orbital sander, I may have actually thought I was onto something revolutionary. Of course, I soon realized I could produce the same fluid with my hand. I may have realized it wasn’t a capability unique to me by the time I’d identified the word “masturbation” in a book at the city library. (Holy Hot Dog, Batman! There’s a word for what I do in the bathtub!) Still, it was an enormous revelation when during Driver’s Ed, in the summer after my ninth grade year, a guy bragged about asking a Special Ed. kid if he’d masturbated yet. Yet? Like it’s a given and only the timing is variable? Wow! I’d only waited two years for that news bulletin.

Porn Cornucopia, Uptopia

Catchy title, huh? Yeah, I thought so, too. But, like a lot of advertising. It’s not true. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. More is not better. The first flash of nudity, the first hint that crotch shots are on the docket, the first photo that has you saying, “Oh, my God. How do they even do that?” Those are exciting. Those are the moments where you’d sell your soul for an endless run of near-orgasmic stimuli. The reality is that the stuff—whatever it is—gets old pretty quickly. You might look for more and more of the same, but it has to be different in some way or it’s dullsville, same-old, same-old.