Crash Course On My Sexual History

Nine Years Old: 

  My older brother showed me a Playboy magazine he had stolen from my father's closet. It didn't do anything for me sexually, but I was amazed at what the female body looked like. Breasts the size of my head, long, smooth-looking legs, slender arms, wide hips. I asked my brother what you did with a woman. He said, "Put your weiner in them." He thought about this for a moment and asked, "Right?". I shrugged. 

Twelve Years Old: 

  I wish I hadn't been so ashamed of masturbation. I could have asked some questions and gotten back answers that could have saved me from embarrassment. One time, while still in grade school, I was told by my mother I had to spend the evening with the youth pastor and his wife. "You're going to go to a monster truck show," she had told me. I didn't give too much of a s**t for monster trucks, but I was into the idea when she told me we'd be in one of the private booths. Free soda, free food, thirty inch televisions! I was so excited I ran straight to my room and began to jerk off. 

  Right in the middle of the movie my imagination was creating, my mother yelled for me to come out of my room. The pastor had arrived and it was time for me to go. I told her to give me one second, wiped the sweat from my brow, and got down to business. 

  When I jumped into the pastor's car, it took him a moment but he finally asked, "What kind of cologne is that you're wearing?" Him and his wife laughed together and I lied and said, "Old Spice. Like my father." It took me many years to realize that, when you ejaculate, you should clean it up. People can smell those type of things. 

Seventeen Years Old:

  I was hanging out with a girl from school. Her name was Charlie. She had red hair which I found to be exciting. I had only been with a brunette and a blonde. I imagined a redhead having an even more exotic body than the other girls. Her skin was white as a ghost and freckles covered most of it. Sometimes, when feeling flirtatious, I'd trace them with my finger and she would ask what I was doing. I would tell her I was drawing my dreams on her forearm. 

  She was telling me about how she liked another kid in our class. His name was Timothy. Him and I had been friends since fifth grade but, at that moment, I could think of him only as being an a*****e. 

 "Should I shave my legs?" she asked. 

 "What do you mean?" I said. 

 She pulled up her pants to expose light red hairs all over her legs. I cringed and told her, "Yes." That was the first time I realized girls only looked their best when they had to. 

Twenty-Four Years Old: 

  My friend was having a party at his house. I would say his parents were gone and we invited all of our friends, but that only happened in the movies we watched. His parents were f*****g downstairs. And we only invited over three of our guy friends and every girl whose number we happened to have. When they showed up, I got nervous and tried to act cooler than I actually was. "Wanna' see me drink a whole forty ounce in three minutes?" I asked. The girls would look at each other and say, "Sure. I guess." I would drink it as fast as I could. I never did it in three minutes, but I always managed to be drunk quick and my clothes would smell like malt liquor. 

  Your self-esteem takes a real shot when you're one out of four guys and there's eight girls and none of them choose you. It changes your mindset about a lot of things. Makes you resentful. Makes you an alcoholic. Makes you despise your own friends. Women can ruin everything just as fast as they can make it better. At this particular party, however, a girl by the name of Heather decided I was worth her time. 

  "Were you impressed with the forty drinking?" I asked. I'm sure I was slurring. 

  She looked at me, smiled and said, "Yes. Very much so." 

  We were flirting all evening until she finally asked if I wanted to find a bedroom. I said yes and held back the urge to throw up at the same time. I don't remember too much after that. I remember stumbling. I remember her taking my clothes off for me as I lied on my back like a dead fish. I remember her tits smelling really good. Like freshly washed clothes and they tasted salty. I remember not cumming. I remember her not cumming. I remember her leaving and I fell asleep naked in my friend's sister's bed. 

  I never saw her again. She avoided the parties she knew I would be at: which was all of them. But, if not for her, I wouldn't have received my first V.D. . I wouldn't have had the pleasure of letting an elderly woman stare at my penis as if it was a science project and then sliding a whittled down Q-Tip into it. I wouldn't know what Chlamydia felt like. I wouldn't be a man. 

Twenty-Eight Years Old:

  It's a weird thing when you live with a girlfriend. It's basically practicing for marriage and, in all honesty, taking a few years off that marriage ultimately. You get used to the woman you say, "I love you," to walking around in sweat pants. Not wearing makeup. Trying to escape the house with her friends whenever she can. And, most times, looking better going out than she has with you in a long time. You know she's happier when you're away. It's been this way for a while. You ignore it because the other alternative is too realistic and painful. 

  When she gets a text at two in the morning and giggles, that's not a good sign. When you ask who it is and she asks if you have to know everything, this is also not good. You should not be proud of the way you wait for her to get into the shower in the morning to lunge for her phone. To unlock it because she trusted you with the password. To hate whoever this "Bill" guy is. To get aroused by the things she is texting him because you forget they're not for you to see. You should definitely not open the shower curtain to confront her. And, whatever you do, don't leave the apartment: that is giving up the right to ever live there again. 

Forty Years Old: 

  I'm married now. To a woman I am completely in love with. Her name is Samantha and she teaches Kindergarten, showing children how to color inside the lines and cut things out of paper. We have four children, a small house in a quiet neighborhood. We have neighbors who come over for dinner and drinks. We have a movie night every Wednesday. When I come home from work, she takes my jacket and kisses me. When she wakes up in the morning, I hold her. We go to church and we're thankful for everything. And, when I've been good, she allows me to f**k her doggystyle. But mostly I just jerk off while she reads. 

Reviews

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

you always have the most intense sense of pacing.. the worlds you create pull me in, and make me feel these people are all too real, and have imparted their secrets upon you to ghost write.

as always, you have black humour laced through out what is really a melancholy piece. what is happiness? it turns out to be a pretty nebulous thing that changes from person to person, unquantifiable, and you capture the sadness of that here..

[Tim M]

Nice. I enjoy the introspective nature of the whole piece, and the pacing felt just right between the glimpses of time. I have a few very minute editorial critiques, such as in the last paragraph it might sound better if the self questioning was taken out, "Her name? Samantha. Her Job? A school teacher". Felt a little out of place with the rest of the description.
I really liked the tone I got from the narrator. You can feel the angst and anger bubbling under the surface, but instead of exploiting that and making him a caricature, it's used as an underpinning that actually supports the calm and collected nature of this voice.
Great job, buddy.