The upside of lanky

* Those who do not want "too much information" might want to skip this post, sexual in nature as it is.

"Dad?" I asked one afternoon in the car on the way home from sixth grade, "What does masturbation mean?" A new kid at school had made a joke using this word. I had laughed even though I didn't get the joke. My parents had always encouraged open communication and so my father said without batting an eye, "Well, it's when you give yourself sexual pleasure."

Now sex was something I knew of. I didn't see the attraction to it yet because I hadn't reached the proper nut-ripened age.

"But how?" I asked, understanding the general idea, but clueless of the mechanics.

Dad made some kind of gesture with his hand that I didn't immediately grasp. I looked at him quizzically and he made the same gesture again. I guess I knew what he meant then but I was still a bit confused. (My penis still wasn't really big enough to work with the hand thing like he was demonstrating.)

Somehow, the subject got changed and we talked about other things until arriving home.

What do you think the first thing that I did was upon arriving home? Right, I went directly to the bathroom to try out dad's tutorial. About twenty minutes later, dad pounded on the door and said, "Ricky, I know what you're doing in there, now come on out." I had met with little success anyway, but from his tone of voice, I stung with a bit of shame thinking that talking about it must be okay, but doing it must not be. I came out and practiced later in the safety of my bedroom at night.

Still, it would be another year before I would truly be able to pleasure myself. By the beginning of 7th grade, I had already given up on dad's method which had lost its allure months before (since it didn't seem to work.) At this point, I was back to doing crazy boy shit; sticking paper clips into my urethra to see how far they would go, blowing air through a straw and into my bladder via my peehole and then "penis farting" the air back out, and finally trying to bend over and reach my penis with my tongue.

The last item there proved quite challenging. For weeks, I practiced touching the head of my penis with my tongue and then pushing farther and farther until I was able to get the whole kit and kaboodle in my mouth and even trigger my own gag reflex with my penis. It's hard to explain why I was doing this, the best answer I can give is boredom.

It was during one of these "exercises" that a crazy, scary feeling invaded my genitals and squirted something into my mouth. I was totally taken off guard and didn't really enjoy it because I thought something bad had happened. But after the initial shock, I put two and two together and realized I'd had my first orgasm.

Guess what I did everyday after school in the 7th grade? Guess what I became an expert at by 8th grade?