From the outside, the little wooden storage shed sagged like a well-worn face, caving in on itself with years of weight and rot and worry. Inside, it looked no better, with crooked shelves only half-heartedly hanging on, and piles of debris and rusty tools dangerously strewn about. The air in the dilapidated structure was still and stifling. Bits of dust floated in the light that managed to intrude through the broken windows hung heavily with spider webs; any bits of glass that remained were coated with grime. It was the perfect hiding place for a kid, or for a dirty book, and both were present on this summer day. It was also an unlikely location for an introduction to sex, but most of us don’t get to choose how we first brush up against that. Dropping my bike at the door, I shut the rickety thing behind me and began my furtive exploration of that word which suddenly tingled with illicit thrill and danger.
There’s things that you guess
And things that you know
There’s boys you can trust
And girls that you don’t
There’s little things you hide
And little things that you show
Sometimes you think you’re gonna get it
But you don’t and that’s just the way it goes.
Earlier that day, we’d been hanging around with my brother’s friend, who lived a few blocks away. Back then, we’d hop on our bikes before we even had breakfast, jump from pool to pool and house to house, and not return home until it was time for an early dinner. We were roaming through his friend’s house – nobody’s parents were home during the day then – playing hide and seek or giving chase the way that kids do, and at one point I found myself upstairs alone. His sister’s bedroom door was open and on the wall was a poster of George Michael in a skimpy white Speedo. All that I was supposed to feel toward a poster of Kelly LeBrock hit me when I gazed upon the hairy, lithe body of Mr. Michael, squinting happily from some beach in Greece, backed by a blue sky and flagrantly displaying most of his skin in wet, glistening form. I was transfixed and bewitched all at once, and I remember standing there stunned, caught by the surprise of all that I was feeling, and not understanding any of it.
I swear I won’t tease you
Won’t tell you no lies
Don’t need no bible
Just look in my eyes
I’ve waited so long baby
Now that we’re friends
Every man’s got his patience
And here’s where mine ends
Eventually, I roused myself from my visual inquisition, but soon made excuses to go back upstairs, where I surreptitiously indulged in more lustful gazing and looking. My awakening to a physical attraction was confusing, but came in what felt like completely natural form. This wasn’t something I had been conditioned to experience – if anything, I was waiting for the day when I found the same reaction to a woman, and that day would never come. This was a primal, powerful impulse that drew my eyes and head and heart to a handsome man with a teasing smile, speaking to something deep within, speaking to something I’d never seen portrayed in fairy tales or books or television. It was the same stirring I was starting to feel when our neighbor – some blond high school boy who seemed so much older than us then – doffed his shirt and ruggedly strode into our pool on the hottest summer days.
I want your sex
I want your love
I want your sex
I want your sex.
The dim, shadowy recesses of that house fade into memory here, and our little band of boys moves back outside, into the sun, into the heat, rolling down banks of green grass, horsing around as boys do, making the most of summer by doing the absolute least, and somehow exerting all our energy in the process. We found our way into that barely-standing wooden shed that was set nearer the road and away from the house. My brother’s friend beckoned us in and showed us a pile of paperback romance novels, some pages of which had been earmarked, and we took turns reading what would likely amount to some very tame sex scenes today. At the time, however, they were gleefully scandalous to our naïve eyes. More than that, they made room for the imagination to take over, and mine was thirsty, boundless, and bold.
It’s playing on my mind
It’s dancing on my soul
It’s taken so much time
So why don’t you just let me go
I’d really like to try
Oh I’d really love to know
When you tell me you’re gonna regret it
Then I tell you that I love you but you still say no
Sex, then, began as a matter of the mind. That’s where it was taking place, that’s where my notions of it were forming, and that’s where it felt most exciting. When reading about it in some cheap paperback novel, my mind focused on the man. Unforced and unswayed by all the hetero-normative shit around me, I still wanted to connect with the guy instead of the girl. My body, my physical and mental make-up, and my own baseline of emotion were all drawn to the male form. It was natural, it was elemental, it was where my first inklings originated. Only when social constructs and pressures came into play did I realize what I was feeling would be deemed wrong. That sort of shame was almost irrevocably harmful, and it’s the sort of thing that would shade many of my subsequent romantic relationships.
I swear I won’t tease you
Won’t tell you no lies
Don’t need no bible
Just look in my eyes
I’ve waited so long baby
Out in the cold
But I can’t take much more girl
I’m losing control
Back then, it was more innocent. Before the shame, there was only curiosity and the inquisitive pinprick of wanting to know more. The boys left the shed, but I lingered, telling them I’d catch up later. This was forbidden treasure, and I wasn’t ready to let it go. I quickly thumbed through the pages of the scandalous tome, re-reading certain passages to better grasp what was going on in all the metaphors and coded descriptions – the way humans sometimes do their best to disguise and beautify sex. I don’t even think I got a hard-on (surely I didn’t hop on my bike with a chub and gym shorts and ride through the streets of Amsterdam on that summer day) because it was more fascinating than arousing at such a young age. Still, I knew what direction I was headed in, even if I didn’t fully fathom the ramifications, and my cock was pointing me to men. I speak so frankly not in an effort to demystify sex, but to celebrate its integral and healthy place in our lives. That my first sexual explorations would be found in a book is fitting for someone who finds enthrallment and passion in a chosen cadence of words.
It’s natural
It’s chemical
It’s logical
Habitual
It’s sensual
But most of all
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you.
Sex is natural, sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural, sex is fun
Sex is best when it’s one on one
One on one
Leaving the book in its run-down shed, I got back on my bike and rode away, rejoining the boys for whatever our next adventure was, and returning to the cares of a summer that felt endless and all-to-brief all at once. At night, alone in bed, when the air-conditioning gave off the slightest, softest moans, and I still couldn’t cool down, my mind would return to that poster and that book, and ideas of men started the beautiful haunting that would dog me for all the days since.
