by Steve Almond
A few weeks later, I sneak into his room and try on one of his Speedos. I am thinking that maybe, just maybe, it is the suit that makes the man. I gaze at myself in the mirror and it takes me a few seconds to even find my dick.
Horse
Sophomore year, I develop a fierce crush on a girl named Suzie. But she takes up with a kid who is reputed to have a schlong on the equine scale. He is on the swim team with Mike. Apparently, the central qualification for this team is a really big cock.
Everywhere I turn, I encounter really big cocks. The focus on them is relentless, almost religious in nature. One of the enduring myths of these years concerns an alleged tryst between Tim Hollins and the unfortunately named Holly Kooch. As the tale goes, penetration is never achieved because Hollins is too big to fit inside. I fantasize about this attempted coupling constantly—I place them on a blanket at dusk, the light dreamy and sylvan—not because I have a raging crush on Holly (though I do), but because I envy Hollins. Too big to fit inside! My God! It seems the greatest male achievement one could hope for.
The Cult of the Big Cock is rampant. We all seem to know who among us has a big cock and we treat them with an unspoken deference. Eric Rulifson berates me after I tease another kid for having pimples: “George may have some zits, but he also has a nine-inch cock,” a defense so devastating I am left speechless.
My pal Jon Carnoy and I spend hours discussing the cock size of the guys on our soccer team. On those occasions when our homo-vanity revs high, we spank ourselves to a state of tumescence and measure. If you pie-chart my psyche at any point during high school, big cocks and consequent ideation will occupy 79 percent of my waking life.
Lizzie
I am in the backyard, playing Ping-Pong against the warped backboard. Neither of my brothers will play me anymore, so I make believe I’m up against Adolf Hitler, with the fate of the Jews hanging in the balance. To summarize: I am bored.
Dave appears at the back door. He has a look of barely suppressed joy on his face; I will soon endure humiliation.
“What?” I say.
“Mom wants to see you.”
“About what?”
I find my mother in my father’s study—not a good sign. She is seated at the desk. The recliner is for me. I am fifteen years old, a junior. I have been in my awkward phase for nine years.
“Well,” she says. “Steven.” She sets her hands carefully on her lap. “I want to say, to begin with, that I’m very glad you’re using protection.”
My mother is staring at me, having just made direct reference to my use of a condom and therefore, in my mind, to my penis, an action that strikes me as a betrayal of certain founding mother/son principles. But my mother is a no-nonsense type, a psychiatrist who spends her days listening to graphic kvetchings.
“I recognize that you and Pamela have become sexually active. I’m proud of you for choosing to do so responsibly.”
I make a clucking noise.
I do not think to question how it is that my mother has figured out that I am having sex with Pam. That is way beyond me. I am still trying to fit my penis and my mother into the same room without puking.
“There is one thing we need to talk about,” my mother says. “Yesterday when I came home from work Lizzie was playing with something on the oriental rug, chewing on something.”
Lizzie is our new Labrador retriever. She is a frantic puppy who will soon grow into a frantic dog and be shipped off to a farm. She chews on everything. The only one of us who exerts any control over Lizzie is Mike, who French-kisses her with alarming frequency. My mother waits for me to make the logical connection.
I do not.
“I didn’t know what Lizzie was chewing on,” my mother says slowly. “So I went over to see what it was.”
I am still not getting it, because my brain has a good habit of locking up when in the presence of large, mortifying revelations.
“I went over to see what it was,” my mother repeats. “And, as it so happened, she was chewing on a condom. A, uh, used condom.”
My reaction to this news is physiologically complicated. I begin sweating. My sphincter goes into a lengthy spasm. A vision comes to me of my mother walking over to Lizzie and bending down to figure out what she is chewing on and realizing what it is and sighing the sort of sigh that only the mother of three teenage boys can sigh and staring down at Lizzie and the condom, saying Bad dog! Bad dog! and trying to decide what the hell to do. She is a neat freak. She is a neat freak particularly when it comes to the oriental rug, which is hand-knotted and beautiful, with intricate designs I have spent many many stoned hours inspecting, a rug that frankly has no business in the living room, that belongs in a boy-and-dog-proof vault. My mother tells Lizzie to sit and to drop it, but Lizzie will not, so my mom finally grabs the edge of the used condom, which, to Lizzie, signals that it’s time to play. She starts shaking her head like hyper dogs do and clamps down on the condom, which, thanks to the sharpness of her teeth, has punctured already, such that when my mother tries to pull it away the latex tears and my mother is spattered (perhaps in her actual face) with my semen.
So now I’ve got this invasive thought in my head (thanks, head!), which I know to be wildly inappropriate and, which I know, what’s more, as the child of two psychiatrists, suggests some pretty unsavory things about me in terms of my Oedipal Complex and my hostility toward women and the likelihood (awfully likely) that I will grow into a sexual deviant who seduces women in the unconscious hope of staining them with my semen, and/or has sexual relations with dogs. I glance at my mother. She has that look that says: I know what you are thinking, Steven. So I say to her (in my head), Oh yeah? What am I thinking? And she says (in my head, quite calmly), Your father and I have discussed the matter. We both feel these thoughts are within the normal range of adolescent neuroses, and nothing that thirty-five years of therapy won’t cure.
Back in reality, my mother is saying something like, “Lizzie must have found it in the bathroom…” But I am having trouble making out the words because I’m in the midst of what amounts to a grand mal seizure. At a certain point her mouth stops moving and I nod and mutter an apology. I am profoundly thankful she does not try to hug me.
I stumble back to my room. My brothers are standing in the doorways to their rooms shaking their heads, and I see now that I am not the first son called into the study; I am in fact the third and final son she has spoken to this afternoon, the one she has judged least likely to be having sex, an implied fact that only magnifies the horror of the entire Lizzie/used-condom episode, which is now—thanks to my brothers—public property to be invoked at their leisure.
Penis, Failing
Again, unfortunately, I am fifteen years old. I have somehow managed to become a regular on a program called TV-20 Dance Party, which features teenagers from around the Bay Area dancing to songs such as “99 Luftballons” and “Don’t You Want Me.” The year is 1982, so everyone is dressed in clothing that, just a few years later, will have to be burned.
It is unclear to me how I became a regular on this program, as there is only one dance I know how to do, which is that strange maneuver that Molly Ringwald showcased in The Breakfast Club, which requires one leg to be kicked out while the upper body jerks in the opposite direction. Imagine a Rockette with epilepsy. Now make the Rockette into a teenage boy with tapered tartan surf pants and chin acne. That is me. Hello.
It is a Tuesday in June and TV-20 Dance Party is taping live this afternoon, so I head over to Pam’s house to pick her up. The moment I arrive she whispers, My mom is gone. This means we can have sex. It is our seventh time. We kiss deeply, madly, incompetently. We grope. We do the sort of spastic undressing expected of teenagers having sex for the seventh time. We’re on Pam’s bed. She is lying naked, her strawberry-blond snatch glistening. Summer has left an adorable scattering of freckles on her breasts. Pam is stroking me and saying Put it in, put it in. But I cannot put it in because I will come if I do.
“Let me put something on,” I say.
This is the central benefit of condom use, as far as I am concerned: It helps me not come before intercourse. I am hoping to retreat to the bathroom and give my cock a few stern whacks with the back of my hand, which, I have been led to believe by Jon Carnoy, will draw me back from the brink. But Pam reaches under her pillow and hands me a condom.
“I want you inside,” she murmurs.
“Let me taste you first,” I say.
She shakes her head.
I stare down at her face, her lovely, blushing body. She raises her legs a bit, lets her knees fall apart, repeats that phrase, I want you inside, and I realize, with crushing clarity, that I will never enjoy a moment of such exquisite arousal again. I tear the package open and reach down. The simple act of touching the condom against the head of my cock—not unrolling, mind you, just touching—sends me over the brink. Pam’s body lies unfurled beneath me. She is saying I’m ready! I’m so ready! I close my eyes and curse silently, then ejaculate into my cupped palm.
It is absolutely essential that Pam not know what just happened. I tell her I have to go pee, which is something that women—even recently postvirginal women in a state of extreme want—seem to understand. In the bathroom, I wash my hands. I glare at my dick for a while. I sit on the toilet and try to conjure an image from one of the porno mags that, thrillingly, has appeared under the sink of the downstairs bathroom at home. When this doesn’t work, I grab a box of Pam’s tampons. I am hoping—what?—maybe there’s some kind of hot insertion illustration. But there is only a paragraph about Toxic Shock Syndrome, which does not help.
A car pulls up to the house and Pam’s mom appears in the courtyard, humming the theme of her favorite soap, which would usually be a very bad thing, but which I now view as something akin to divine intervention. I dash back into Pam’s room. She is off the bed, hurrying her tits into a bikini top. I pull on my boxers and we both head for the pool in her backyard. Oh, hi, Mom. Nothing. Just swimming.
Two hours later, we are standing around in a warehouse studio with two dozen other teens, waiting for “The Safety Dance” to start blaring, so we can enact moments of spontaneous teen behavior. The couple next to us is making out. She is a tiny blonde and he is a tall Latin guy who (of course) appears to have some kind of large tuber in his jeans. It seems terribly wrong that I should be allowed on TV.
Assailant
I am in Long’s Drugs, shoplifting with Tommy Tatum. This is a fairly routine activity, though, for reasons I cannot fully explain, on this occasion we are shoplifting items from the exhilarating Health section. Actually, Tommy is not stealing stuff; he is merely encouraging me to do so. I am wearing a tank top and soccer shorts. This is not appropriate shoplifting garb. It is possibly the worst outfit one could select for such a purpose. Nonetheless, I have come to steal, and there is very little that can prevent a troubled suburban boy from stealing if he has set his mind to the task.
I am not sure whether it is Tommy or me who picks up the Sta-Hard Gel, but I do remember that we are both instantly spellbound. The product comes in a sleek little tube and it promises we will give our partners climax after climax by helping the user control his natural ejaculatory function. It does this by de-sensitizing the regions instrumental to male climax. “It numbs the end of your dick!” Tommy observes helpfully. It is immediately implied that I must steal the Sta-Hard Gel.
I have already tucked a package of ribbed condoms into the lining of my soccer shorts, which should be enough. But Pam is not enjoying climax after climax when we have sex. In point of fact, she has not enjoyed climax. Naturally, this has become a source of angst for me. Unlike other boys, who are happy enough to be having orgasms with another person, I have come to see Pam’s inability to orgasm as a reflection of my enfeebled manhood. I am always pressing the matter, working her body with a certain grim, unrelenting ardor, as if it were a new category on the SAT test. This is not working.
And so, while Tommy views the Sta-Hard Gel as a gag, I am secretly taken with the notion that it may be the answer to my dilemma. I fold the cardboard packaging in half and slip the tube into my shorts. We make our way to the register, where we buy packs of Big Red gum, so as to be viewed as legitimate customers.
The cashier is a girl named Becca. I attempted to scam on her freshman year. She says hello to Tommy.
We are heading for the exit when we hear a commotion behind us. A large black man is sprinting past the registers. He is shouting something I can’t quite make out. During one of those wonderful racist half-seconds to which white people are so dependably prone, I decide that he must be an armed robber. Then it becomes clear that the guy is actually store security.
“Wow,” I say. “Someone is totally busted.”
Tommy nods.
We are rapt now, watching this guy sprint across the store. There is nothing more pleasurable for teenage boys than watching someone else get busted. It is not until the guy leaps past the register nearest to us that it begins to dawn on me: I am rubbernecking my own arrest.
“Don’t move, don’t even think about moving!” the guy shouts, and I say—oh, Christ, I have no idea what I say. I do know that I am not moving.
“Please take the products out of your pants,” the guard says.
“What?” I say.
“You heard me.”
Tommy shakes his head. He is muttering dude in a manner that is both sympathetic and deeply contemptuous.
I reach into my shorts and take out the ribbed condoms.
“The other one too.”
“What other one?” I say.
The guard glowers down at me in a bored way. He has all day.
I pull out the Sta-Hard Gel and hand it over.
“Why did you steal these things?”
I say nothing.
“Do you have any money?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Does your friend?”
Tommy nods.
The guard looks at both of us. He seems confused by our incompetence. He tells us to stay where we are and walks over to Becca’s register and inspects the items I have stolen. The entire store—this is a big store, with a dozen registers—has come to a standstill. The guard could just hand the items to the cashier, but this is his moment in the sun. He has captured a criminal. He begins describing them for Becca, like they are suddenly doing inventory.
“Trojans. Ribbed. Twelve-pack. Got that?”
Becca nods.
The guard looks at the little tube in puzzlement.
“What is this stuff? Stay-Hard Gel?”
He is speaking loud enough for everyone to hear him. But what strikes me is how he pronounces the first word (correctly). I have been pronouncing the S-T-A phonetically in my head and wondering what it might stand for.
“What’s the total?” the guard says.
Becca informs him.
He turns to Tommy. “Do you have enough money to pay for the condoms and the Stay-Hard Gel that your friend attempted to steal?”
Tommy nods.
The guard shakes his head. “Come with me,” he calls out. “No, not you. Just the assailant. You pay for the items.”
He leads me (the assailant) across the store and to a backroom. We climb some stairs to a little office and begin the formal interrogation.
“Why did you steal those items?”
“My girlfriend needed me to get condoms. I didn’t have the money.”
“But your friend had money.”
“I know. It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“I understand you got yourself a little lady, you need protection. But you got to pay for that stuff. You know that.”
“I know,” I say. “It was stupid.”
“You got to be responsible.”
“I know.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen. You should know better.”
“I know,” I say. “I should know better.”
&n
bsp; The guard nods, which I mistake for impending clemency.
“I gotta call your parents,” he says.
This has not occurred to me.
“My parents are out of town for the weekend,” I say.
Oddly, this is true. My uncle is in town, “supervising” us.
“I gotta call your house anyway,” he says skeptically.
This is the worst scenario of all, because either Mike or Dave will answer the phone, and when they find out it’s someone from Long’s Drugs they will immediately sniff out the situation and the one who answers the phone will pretend to be my uncle, or will promise to fetch our uncle, then hurriedly explain the situation to the other brother, who will assume the role of my uncle on the phone. Thus the full story will emerge (caught shoplifting, Sta-Hard Gel), and my penis—tiny, ineffectual—will climb up inside my body and refuse to come out ever again.
I am close to tears now. My body slumps forward. I begin begging. This goes on for several minutes. My voice is shaky. I am offering him my misery. I am saying to him: Don’t you get it? I am my own worst punishment. It feels like the logical culmination of my teenage years: to be so exposed before a stranger with a plastic badge.
At a certain point the expression on the guard’s face softens. He shakes his head slowly and tells me he’s going to let me off this time, though I am banned for life from Long’s Drugs.
I begin slinking toward the door.
“Why you wanna steal that stuff anyway, man?” the guard says suddenly. “That’s like putting Ben-Gay on your equipment.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” I say.
“You a young man,” he says. “No need for that. Just do it once, then come back for seconds, you understand?”
“Yessir,” I say.
I walk down the stairs bursting with gratitude. I have just received the most useful sexual advice of my life to date.
Becca waves as I exit the store.
Tommy is waiting for me out front. “That looked rough,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“We could see right into that guy’s office, dude.”
By turning on the light, the guard had transformed his one-way mirror into a full-length window, through which, as Tommy enthusiastically informs me, the entire population of the store watched the unfolding drama of my non-arrest.
