It was a cold, blustery fall day. Football practice was over and I was walking to my friend Gilbert Dennison's house. I was ten years old. The word was out that there was something there I had to see. Little did I know that it would change my life forever.
Gilbert and I tromped inside. There in the hallway was his dad's new gun rack. In the dining room, his mom's new china cabinet. Nice, but hardly the stuff to make young boys speak in excited whispers.
In his room, Gilbert opened the closet and pulled out a new model airplane kit. Surely this wasn't it. I had seen many P‑51 Mustang kits in my day.
"So, uh, Gilbert. ." I stammered. But Gilbert already knew what I wanted.
"It's in Bob's room," he said, nonchalantly, like this happened every day. Bob was Gilbert's older brother who had just gone away to college. "You can look for a sec," said Gilbert. "But if you hear my mom coming, get back in here quick."
I made a beeline for Bob's room, opened the door, and stepped inside. I saw it instantly. There it was. On the fiberboard wall, above the bed. In plain view. A Christmas picture. A Christmas picture?
Well, like no Christmas I had ever seen.
It was a Playboy centerfold of a young woman hanging mistletoe. And she had no top on!
Nothing could have prepared me for that sight.
Boom. Birth of a chubby. Unintentional. Uncontrollable. I didn't even know what a Playboy centerfold was. I didn't know what a chubby was. Had I understood the importance of that day, I would have taken a shower, put on a fresh shirt, and grabbed a couple of soda pops for the big event. I was experiencing my sexual awakening. Something inside me had stirred and come to life.
I mean, I'd seen my mom. But that was my mom.
Looking back, I'm amazed Gilbert's folks let that thing go up on the wall in the first place. Now I hate myself for not asking them if they were interested in taking in a foster child. In any case, I suppose I owe them and Bob and Gilbert a belated thanks.
My life has never been the same since.
- -
I know what you're thinking: A picture of a naked woman changed his life? Exciting, sure. Important, maybe. But life‑transforming? Come on.
You come on.
Let me describe it for you.
The young woman was arranging mistletoe. She had a Doris Day face and a Technicolor makeup job. She wore red high heels and really thick underpants that came up over her bellybutton. I call them "amples." (If there are briefs, there must be also be amples.) Her feet were spread in a very mannequinlike stance. Otherwise she was pretty naked. That is, she wasn't wearing many clothes. Like I said: She had no shirt! And there she was, smiling. . at me.
Personally.
She seemed like a nice young woman. A typical girl next door. Three decades later, while browsing in a used‑book store, I found her centerfold in an old issue of Playboy. Her name was Ellen Stratton and she was the December 1959 Playmate. Instantly I felt like I was back in Gilbert's brother's room.
"Hey, Ellen. Babe. How ya doin'? Let me get a good look at you. You know, it's amazing. You haven't aged a bit. Remember me? Little Timmy. I used to. . no, that was Bob. Right, Timmy. A little older, but still crazy about you. I'm glad we finally get to talk."
In the foldout, Ellen was standing in a cheesy living room, the kind you see in Mad Magazine parodies of Madison Avenue ads of the fifties. There was even one of those big orange ski‑lodge fireplaces. A real fashion statement. The whole thing brings back echoes of ascots and highballs and David Niven with slicked‑back hair. I half expected to see men in double‑breasted gabardine suits and women in slinky cocktail dresses in the background, drinking martinis, chatting with Hugh Hefner.
On the other hand, if I could have looked around the corner, into another room, I'd probably have seen her family-mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother Billy, sister Jane, and probably their dog-at the dining‑room table, eager to devour their Christmas fixings.
"Ellen! Ellen, dear? Your dad's about to carve the turkey."
"Coming mother. I just have to fix the mistletoe."
(And she's doing it in her underwear, Mrs. Stratton.)
Or maybe Ellen was a young housewife, her husband waiting in the bedroom to tuck her in on Christmas Eve.
"Sweetie, Santa's almost here."
"Okay. I just have to let Tim see me naked for a few minutes more. You don't mind, do you?"
"No problem. Take your time."
What a guy!
Every time I went to Gilbert's house, I'd stare at that picture. I'd walk out of the room and just go right back in. I'd go downstairs into the kitchen, then make up some stupid excuse like I'd left something in my jacket upstairs. I was probably wearing my jacket when I said that. I told you, any excuse.
But I didn't want anybody looking at me looking at her. That was the first sign of hiding my face from God, as they say. I was embarrassed by the heat in my cheeks. Maybe I had a fever? All I knew was that I had to study the picture. I had to honor those stirrings. Hey, they were the first stirrings I'd had. I didn't quite know what was going on. I didn't know what to do about any of it, but I didn't want to take out any time to have anyone explain it right then, either. I just wanted more, because Ellen Stratton was the most wonderful thing I'd ever witnessed in my life.
This was the invention of the H‑bomb. This was the discovery of electricity. This was the wheel and fire all rolled into two bosoms.
This was better than blowing up fish at Cherry Creek.
This woman had no top on!
- -
In a way, the picture was both frightening and reassuring. I realized for the first time that, dumb as it sounds, all women are naked under their clothes.
Every women is naked under her clothes! Let me say that again: They're all naked! Of course, that discovery made me instantly distrust all women forever: they're hiding this! They have this power and I didn't even know it. It's just under their clothes! The girls my own age were not of the same species. This picture had nothing to do with them. Nor did I relate Ellen to the girls at school. I related her to the gym teacher, the French teacher, the cafeteria cashier-well, without the hairnet-any woman who was taller than me. It's funny how little boys turn into lecherous lunatics. They get the same glazed‑over eyes as strip‑bar patrons because they're undressing every woman they see. This was sex, not that I was clear about what sex was. I think I once got so excited about what I'd learned that I said to the girl next to me in class, "Can you imagine this sex stuff?"
Then I quickly realized, "Wait a minute! She's one of them!"
The girls I knew wanted Barbie‑doll romance and valentines and "I think I love you's." The difference between them and Ellen was tremendous. Ellen represented a manly, sexual urge arising in me. I soon discovered it was a sleeping giant. A woman can be naked in National Geographic, but this woman was naked with something in mind. Her nakedness had a power to it, and therein lies the rub-no pun intended.
Of course, Ellen was so casual about decorating in the buff that she acted like she wasn't naked at all.
The husband: "Santa won't come down the chimney if you're still awake. Is Tim done staring yet?"
Or mom: "Ellen, grandma's starting to snore. Maybe we should start eating."
Ellen Stratton will forever be at that odd age that I was somehow never at. She's a young woman put in an older situation. I was always younger than the centerfolds; then older. I never had the feeling I could go out and find anyone my age who looked the way Ellen looked, and relate to her on a person‑to‑person level. She was always somehow apart from me.
In fact, her whole situation wasn't real. I know, because for much of my life I looked for a woman in that circumstance and found it did not exist. I never knew anyone who hung mistletoe in her underwear. I was never even in the next room while it was going on. . to my knowledge.
I was always at the Christmas table, waiting to eat.
- -
To be honest with you, looking back at how that day changed my life, fm not sure why I didn't just take the picture off the wall and bring it home. After all, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Hell, I'm forty‑one years old and I still think about it.
Ellen Stratton is probably sixty by now.
Ellen, wherever you are, you're always in my heart.
- -
Sooner or later it's all about girls and sex. Boys learn about sex, and what girls looked like under their clothes, in many places. In my time it was from Raquel Welch, in One Million Years B.C., standing defiant, wearing a skimpy item from the latest cavegirl collection. I was from the poster, actually; the movie was horrible. It was from Ann‑Margret shimmying alone onscreen in a tight blue dress, warbling "Bye, Bye, Birdie." It was from sneaking peeks at copies of Argosy and Gent magazines. It was from peeping through the bathroom window at the college coed my parents rented a room to one year. It was from whatever stories we could gather from guys who seemed to know what the unknowable was all about.
Even if they didn't know anything at all. A good line of bullshit goes a long way. Even today.
Once I woke up sexually, I looked at everything differently. It's a change of perspective. I even looked at comic books anew. Suddenly, I half understood what Archie wanted from Veronica. I'm still trying to figure out what Jughead wanted from Reggie.
I had a thing for Veronica. Betty was sexier, but Veronica had the bucks. Betty would have been a better wife, and more Archie's match, but he always liked Veronica's style. Both Betty and Veronica had great tits. I wish I could have told Archie about my great discovery: If you change their heads, it's the same body. Black hair with big tits, blond hair with big tits. Very attractive. Got a little chubby now thinking about Veronica.
Of course, James Bond was my idea of a man's man. I loved Q's gadgets, and the Aston Martin. Eventually I noticed the girls, and soon the worlds of technology and women merged. Bond's movies raised my desires to a fever pitch. Cleavage, strength, maleness, virility, and small shiny things that clicked and exploded. Those films were sex, so much sex that they were primeval. Ellen Stratton, the Playmate, was a woman alone. James Bond, however, showed me how to get the woman and what to do with her when I got her. God, was he smooth and stylish. It seemed pretty damn easy for him, unzipping the beautiful Russian spy's dress, her bounteous flesh spilling over. Or just happening to be on the beach, hiding behind a rock, when Ursula Andress came out of the water in that excuse for a bikini. Talk about lucky timing. For years I thought Bond's way with women was the way. This explains, of course, why I didn't date for quite a while. There was no way I could get girls into a car with a handgun. Come on. Do you know any women named Pussy Galore? My idea of a date was going to the hobby shop and getting a can of gold spray paint.
"Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
- -
Bond flicks only came out once a year. Argosy and Stag magazines were always lying around, mostly at the barbershop. They were full of uncomfortable images like bosomy women draped over carcasses of dead sheep, or guys with guns and women with big breasts in ripped clothing. Your typical story was "I Ate a Bear After I Killed Him with My Bare Hands." Everybody in the illustration was angry: the guy was angry at her, she was angry at the guy, the bear was angry at both of them. Maybe the bear and the babe had a secret thing going on, and got surprised by the guy in the forest clearing-which explains why everyone was pissed.
These were men's stories, full of furious, unshaven studs with huge pectoral muscles. If a dick could be a man, that's what it would look like. You could smell the sex and sweat coming off the pages. Of course, I didn't know what these guys did with women. I thought they just rubbed chests.
Isn't that what "Argosy" means: rubbing chests?
I think these magazines were actually where Hugh Hefner got his idea for Playboy. He saw these illustrated macho rags and he thought, "Ya know, I bet men would like to see real naked women instead of bears. And pay for it."
- -
After we'd overdosed on James Bond and other sources of sexual apocrypha, the boys in the clubhouse started coming up with some pretty weird ideas about what you do with girls once you "get them"-whatever "getting them" means.
You figure out that kissing is supposed to happen first. Kissing on the lips.
"Well, you kiss them. but not like you kiss your mom-like any of us still, uh. . kiss our moms."
Even those of us who did said, "No, I don't kiss her. She takes a shot, but I. . duck."
This is an honest but sorrowful indication of what men do. Our whole lives are about "getting them." And then ducking.
We used to go, "Girls, yuck." But once the stirrings hit, the transition for most of us was immediate. Some guys, of course, don't progress into this stage very quickly. There's always some kid with a weird name like Augie, going, "Come on guys, what are we talking about this for? Let's go make a fort!"
Even as adults some men would still rather hang out with other men and wonder what concentrating on women has to do with the realities of life, like business and war.
In the end, women are not much different from golf. With both, the mystery is never revealed. Right when you think you've got it, you suddenly feel like a beginner. However, the illusion that we can plumb the mystery of women remains.
- -
Kissing, at the time, was pretty much sex as we knew it.
I practiced kissing my hand. Sometimes I could go for hours. I kissed it in bed. I used to imagine that I was a wounded soldier, and a beautiful nurse had come to see that I was all right. I was hurt, so she had no excuse to refuse the kiss. I guess this was a natural extension of playing war. Then, the point was to escape injury. It still was, but if by some chance you took a hit, at least the day wasn't a total loss. About this time I began being sorry the girls weren't interested in Combat.
I stopped kissing my hand when my brother caught me doing it. We shared a bedroom. Even at that age you had to have some humility.
I should make it clear right now that I did not then, nor did I ever, put my tongue in my hand. No, no, no. We had no idea that even happened. Imagine the horror at the idea of merely putting your mouth against some girl's mouth. And then some kid just back from vacation in Europe tells you that the French do it differently. You almost want to go back to playing war. "No way. Uh, uh. I'd rather be shot in the neck than stick my tongue in someone else's mouth."
Oh, how wrong you can be.
I wonder if it's the same for women? It must be. The only apparent difference was that they often practiced kissing with and on each other. (I didn't miss a thing on those sixth‑grade field trips to the planetarium.) It's definitely something I would still pay to see. And why is that? Men liking women kissing women is so stupid. I don't think any woman fantasizes about two guys kissing. Once again, we're a very different species.
I don't think I'm wrong on this one.
Kissing your hand teaches you very quickly a most important lesson: the nose problem must be dealt with. It's unavoidable. You can't go right at the person you kiss. The standard kiss is direct. Straight on. No twisting. You pucker and squinch your face. Noses collide. It's inevitable. The only difference between kissing mom or grandma and a girl, is angling the nose. When you start thinking about nose placement, you know it's serious. Eventually, you figure out how to get your lips and a girl's lips together.
In fact, the whole sexual mess is about angles. You get way too much information as a kid. You figure out the kissing thing and then some older guy tells you where your penis goes during sex. What!?! When it takes this long to figure out the angles of kissing, you don't want to even bother visualizing how the rest of it works.
Not wanting to have actual sex at the time seemed a certainty, much like "I'll never eat broccoli." You should always be careful about saying "never." But at this point, confronted with all this information and, worse, misinformation, most guys just gave up. It was easier to blow up fish.
Not that we stopped obsessing about it day and night.
Some guys did forge ahead, and they were the lucky ones. All you had to do was get through that first kiss. And soon as the kiss can be performed with the slightest hint of confidence, you're saying, "Now what was that thing about the penis again?"
- -
Spin the Bottle was the game that was supposed to teach us about kissing. Unfortunately, someone would always chicken out. We'd get to the precipice and someone wouldn't play.
It's like welshing on a bet when you're playing poker. Suddenly the whole game is pointless. Any boy who ever experienced the disappointment of kiss welshing surely acquired immediate respect for the honorable tradition of paying off your bets. (Or is it because you know your legs will be broken?)
Spin the Bottle probably reminds guys of basements more than anything else. That's why guys still like them to this day. Eating in the basement is really something.
- -
Once a young man gets the stirrings, and a little bit of knowledge, he's dangerous. He's on a quest to discover what to do with the hormone soup bubbling inside him. And just how does the young man harness this carnal lust for all things female, make her bend to his will, and let him have his…? Hey, hey, hey! In typically male fashion, we're getting ahead of ourselves. No wonder women tell us to slow down.
For most guys there is one girl who will teach him a few of the basics. At this point, the basics don't amount to much: talking to the girl you like, then making physical contact through handholding and kissing. And most important, trying to disguise the awkwardness.
The most confusing part is figuring out which girl.
For most boys there are three types.
The first type knows something. She has something in her eyes, in her face, and you don't care or know what it is, only that you want her knowledge firsthand. That she makes the other girls mad only makes you like her more. When a guy makes other guys mad he's holding back something they want. This is the girl with a bit of experience who is also willing to keep going forward to get more. This is the one who wants to do things in the basement. She'll come over on Saturday to meet the folks and then play games with you, with the lights out. Eventually, she'll suffer the humiliation of seeing her name written on a wall with the word "slag" appended. It's the lunatic inside you that wants her. Not that she cares about you. She most likely has her eyes on an older guy; in order to know what to do with him, she practices on all her inexperienced volunteers. "Come over to my place because I want to touch that." Like panting dogs, they go.
The second girl you're in love with. She doesn't know about the yearnings, or at least she isn't telling. She delights in anniversary cards marking each week you've been together. It's okay to hold her hand. Maybe you even play war together. She makes a wonderfully chaste nurse. Unfortunately, this means you see her only when war breaks out. It's almost backward. This is what an old person's relationship is like.
The third type combines the first two. She actually becomes your girlfriend. For me, our first contact turned out to be a far more human experience than I ever imagined.
My first girlfriend was really sexy, but she wouldn't give it to me in the dark basement. I'd have to get it somehow; and I'd have to give something in return. An unspoken barter system existed-a good early lesson about women and relationships. We sat on the couch for hours. She, waiting for me to do something. Me, waiting for her first to say yes. But you see, I would have to do something first in order for her to respond. But I couldn't make my move until she said yes. The last thing I wanted to do was say, "Um, excuse me, but is it okay to kiss you now?" That's so uncool. So neither one of us knew what was going to happen. A few years later I heard that some older guy came along, dated her once, and "got" her. That's how it always was. Some other guy got what I wanted. Bastards. All of them.
Unfortunately, I never got to be the older guy with any girl. I guess it's too late now, unless I start hanging out at high schools, going, "Hey, want a ride in my convertible?" Not that I ever would.
My first girlfriend was, naturally, the first girl I ever kissed. We waited and waited for her parents to leave the house, or go to bed, or suffer heart attacks. Anything, just go already. When it finally happened, the kiss was warm and hot, but awkward and rushed. I'd never experienced anything like it before. It was nothing like my mother's kiss, thank god. Actually, it did remind me of my brother pinning me down on the ground so he could lick my face.
After it was over, I was pretty certain we didn't do it right. But we were both glad we'd taken the first step. One small step for Tim, one giant leap for his monster. Eventually it got better, and every time we got ready to part we knew the moment was coming, so our hearts would beat loudly, and I'd think to myself, "Wow, this is a wonderful thing."
- -
Men look at women the way men look at cars. Everyone looks at Ferraris. Now and then we like a pickup truck, and we all end up with a station wagon: the best of both worlds. Women equate this with the lady in the parlor and the whore in the bedroom. Men are pretty functional, it's true. What's interesting is that we often find the right kind of woman immediately and then, because of a taste for the Ferrari and the pickup truck, avoid the station wagon for as long as we can hold out.
Excuse me while I duck.
Don't get me wrong. I know fm objectifying women, but I do so without malice. I know in my own heart I don't mean anything bad by it. I just talk about everything that way. That's what all men do. We look at a picture in Playboy and say, "Whew. Nice lines." When we get to know the woman as a person, she's no longer an object.
I wonder if it's similar but reversed for women? Because of our appearance, they project all sorts of feelings onto us that aren't there: "That guy's like such and such, I can tell. He wants me." Then they get to know us and we wind up as objects. "I always knew he was a lug nut."
It's worth thinking about.
The danger is when men start out objectifying-with cars and toys-and then keep doing it. Women aren't like cars. Not remotely. We call cars and boats "she" but that's wishful thinking. Women are not objects. But that's the natural way we think: we merge, we fix, we construct objects. So the first thing we thought about women, after breaking that rock and grunting a couple times‑‑ "Here's a rock that moves" and "Whoa, boy, nothing else makes me feel like that except the Buick I've been working on." If we could have had sex with our cars and boats it would have been a lot easier. But we'd be a smaller species.
- -
Young guys are pretty comfortable about admitting to each other the stirrings they've discovered. This is not something to be afraid of or embarrassed by. It's just the hormones taking over. Men acknowledge what's happened, and as with everything else in life, feel compelled to prove their prowess. In other words, they start making up stories about sex and how much they know and how much they've had. Some guys can bullshit right up to the limit. We're taught at an early age to do this. That's how you get status in the group, by passing off the biggest b.s. and not getting caught. Sometimes all the guys know it's garbage, and they still don't call the guy on it. What's the point? You don't get status that way unless you know something he doesn't-and then you'd have been talking about it.
The kid with the tallest tales was always the one who had just come back from summer vacation. There was no way we could disprove it. "It happened at camp. A girl who rode horses there did everyone!" We let him get away with it because we wanted to be part of whatever happened. I wonder what women said to each other: "You don't want to touch it. They smell bad." I want to know where they got their information.
One kid said his sister always had sex in the basement. More bullshit, we thought. But it ends up he was right. One day, we cracked the door open, looked down, and witnessed two people going at it. It was weird. It seemed like a traffic accident or something. We were mesmerized. We couldn't look away. Even if they had seen us, we couldn't have looked away. We knew what they were doing-but what in the hell were they doing? And on a school day?
- -
Okay, so you're newly self‑conscious and trying to figure out what will attract a girl. Cigarettes seem like a cool thing. But there's difference you learn very quickly between what's cool to guys and what's cool to girls. And what's cool to one girl might not be cool to another. It starts out as a real crap shoot.
A girl I was in love with showed up once at the baseball field where I was smoking a cigarette with a group of guys. We smoke Kools because we were cool. I was excited to see her. The first thing she said was "I thought you were so nice, but here you are smoking." I'm thinking, man have I screwed up. Then I brilliantly countered by appearing aloof, since I didn't want any of my friends to know I'd just given her a valentine. Actually, I'd handed it to her mom, but only because she answered the door before I got a chance to run away. I was so in the habit of leaving things on doorsteps, ringing the doorbell, and running. You know, "Ding Dong and Ditch It." We'd leave sacks of flaming dogshit for some poor sap to stamp out. Naturally, she made it worse by saying, "I was just about to thank you for the valentine, and now you're smoking a stupid cigarette."
I promptly put it out. Come on-I had a crush on her.
As nervous as all this makes them, young boys still want girls to notice them. The problem is the way they do it. Girls want boys to say, "You look so pretty today." You-indirectly-want to say, "You have nice tits." Girls want you to say things that let them know you somehow value them and dig their looks. You want them to let you know that you're someone they want to sleep with. And nobody else. Ever. You want to know that you're turning them on with your boyish charm and your butch‑waxed hair and your dad's cologne. Women want to know they're pretty, and valued, and feminine. All you want to know is "Will you touch my penis?"
I remember all the girls' saying things about Robert Redford, all of which began with "Oh, my god…" To this day I wish I would overhear someone saying that kind of stuff about me. "Tim makes me just want to. ." "I'm so drawn to his. ." "With Tim, it's like flying. ."
I always heard stuff like "Gee, Tim, that shirt makes you look nice." And I'd think, "Yes, but does it make you want me?" Maybe that's what they were actually saying, but they weren't speaking in a language I could understand.
Nothing has changed. How else can you explain the store shelves full of books on how men and women can learn to communicate better? Someone should come out with a man‑woman dictionary, like those English‑French ones. Men say, "You have a nice set of tits." What we mean is, you have a nice package and you're pretty. We don't see only the breasts. Well, only for a moment or two. Women want to hear "You look beautiful." And certain men know how to do that. They learn the little trick. Anyone who wants to teach me can write in.
- -
Bernie Broder taught me all about sex. He was an older guy who didn't bullshit. He felt compassion for younger kids because he had been there. He was a mentor. He bonded with us, and we weren't afraid to ask him questions.
So one day he took five of us down in my dad's fruit cellar and fondled us repeatedly. No, he took us down to the basement and we asked him point‑blank: "How do you make love to a woman?" We weren't going to giggle and be silly; we wanted to know.
In sex‑ed films, when you finally thought you might see something that would give you a clue to what was happening, they suddenly cut away to this outer‑space‑looking shot of sperm paddling furiously for the egg. What galaxy was this in? It was, now that I think about it, the classic comic misdirect. They got your attention and then went from pictures to the scientific data real quick because they didn't want to deal with it either. No one seemed to want to reveal what really went on.
We five listened while Bernie answered our question in his straightforward manner. "A guy lays on top of a girl and his penis goes in between her legs and into her vagina." Once again, it was too much information. The French‑kissing thing and the tongue were enough. My mind was racing. Now how about a game of war? Anyone? Isn't it time to go outside and torture some ants with a magnifying glass?
"So, now wait, wait. You lay on her?"
"No, no, no," said Bernie. "You don't put your legs sideways."
I can't remember what we thought: rub up against women, kiss them. If we'd done it the way we imagined we'd get busted in fifty states today.
I eventually realized it didn't matter what I thought. When Mr. Happy decides it's time, he'll tell you. At this point Mr. Happy was so brutal an animal there was no way to communicate with him.
We later found out that Bernie was dating Ellen Stratton and eventually married her. Then they moved next door to Tommy Rodriguez and his family. Remember Tommy? This guy was in the eighth grade, had a family, and worked at a factory at night. Drove a car to school. I think the guy was forty; he just kept coming back to high school because he liked to shower.
I knew these people having sex were all related.