If I have one single person to "thank" (or, if you prefer, "blame") for encouraging me to have sex with other boys, and providing me with the skills to do it, it would be...
no, not Alex...
not Joe, nor the other boys I played "grab the weenie" with at Y-camp... not another boy... not even a male...
Nope; it would be the lady across the street. I never had sex with her. I never saw her with her clothes off. The subject of sex was never so much as mentioned between us - not even close. In fact, I never even connected her with sex or sexuality, until after she moved out of town. She provided me with the technical "how-to" knowledge I needed to match my desires; and, even today, I would say that much of what I know about sex, I can attribute to her. And she doesn't even know it.

Does that sound curious? It makes more sense, when you know that she owned some special books, which she threw out in the trash when she moved away with her kids. I found those special books, three of them - and they changed my life, immediately and dramatically.

By age 10-and-a-half, I was already very aware of sex and sexuality. I had been masturbating for 3-4 years already, and I knew what my own body could do. I was awakened sexually at Y-camp, right before my 10th birthday, with skinny- dipping and our grab-the-weenie games and my near-miss with Joe. I had wanted to do stuff with someone else for some time. I can't remember any big decision along those lines - there was no "Hey! It's time to find a kid to mess around with!" It was evolutionary. I guess the desire for a "partner" was there all along - since before the doctor experiments at age 4-5, even. I've always been social, always enjoyed sharing things and knowledge and fun with friends, so this desire was undoubtedly innate. But I didn't think of sexuality that way until Y-camp came and went.

What did I want to do? My desires were transformed from subconscious to conscious at Y-camp, with Joe and the other boys. I wanted to rub another boy's weenie, and have him rub mine, till the little tickle turned into a great big tickle for both of us. I knew what fucking was, in a general way, and I wanted to do that with a girl. I knew about dick-sucking and thought in a general way that it would be cool to have someone do it to me (a boy or girl, didn't matter at that point). I had the idea in a general way that sucking on another boy's penis would feel really good, too. The first time I consciously wanted to do that was with Joe, in the woods that night at camp, and I would've done it with no hesitation. (Incidentally, I had no desire at all, back then, to put my mouth on a girl - and I haven't developed it since.)

I'm not sure when I became aware of anal sex. I had a vague sort of idea that anal sex existed in a general way - my earliest-remembered sexual experience, playing doctor at age 4-5, featured something being inserted in my rectum - but it didn't register as a desire, or even much of a curiosity, at that point. At Y-camp, I had a vivid desire to put my erection between Joe's buttocks and rub it till I came, but I don't think I had penetration in mind.

You'll notice my repetition of the phrase "in a general way" in the preceding paragraphs. That's because I didn't know how to do those things. I was now awake, but I wasn't informed. I wanted to do the things mentioned (except anal); but, aside from masturbation, I was hazy on the details. All of those wishes were... I think "unfocused" is the word I want. When I tried to picture how to do these things, I had trouble imagining it. The mechanical details eluded me. Like intercourse, for example: I knew that the boy stuck his cock into a hole somehwere down there on a a girl, but the whole thing was hazy. I had never seen porno (not even written, much less photo). My looks at naked women had been confined to Playboy magazine, and one quick glimpse of my younger female cousin. I never saw enough of females to figure it out.

A side-note about Playboy: Back then they were pretty tame - tits and ass, and a little pubic hair, and that was all. I saw my first Playboys around 7 or 8 y/o - not sure. They belonged to my friends Eric's dad, and he kept them in the back of his Jeep, under a pile of other magazines. Eric and I, and whoever else was along, would occasionally sneak into the garage and gather around a Playboy, looking at the centerfolds and talking about how we'd fuck all those women in two seconds if we were alone with them. Not a single kid in the garage knew how to have sex with a woman, in the technical sense. But we were big talkers.

Anyway, I remember having this general image in my head, that the female vagina ran vertically when she was lying down on her back - i.e., it began about where a boy's penis was rooted to his body, and proceeded straight in, perpendicular to her stomach and thighs. Intercourse involved the boy getting over the top of the girl and doing something like push-ups, I thought. I know exactly where I got the latter idea: my aunt and uncle had a naughty joke book in their bathroom, titled "Jokes for the John". One of the jokes went something like this: "A muscleman was doing pushups on the beach. A drunk wanders past and says, 'Don't look now, buddy, but someone stole your girl.'" (Okay, you can laugh now...) If something is a total mystery, and you're curious, you vacuum all the info you can - even lousy jokes. So the desire was there, but I was unclear on how to put it into practice, and on exactly what people did with each other, sexually.

Another question was how to initiate sex. I didn't give this issue much thought at the time, but I remember wondering how people approached each other. I figured you couldn't just walk up to someone and say "Want to suck my weenie?" out of the blue. But I didn't know how people actually made the approach. This would have involved a plan of sorts, and I usually acted on impulse. If Joe and I had succeeded in sucking each other off that night, it would've been out of sheer momentum, not design. (Ironically, later I tried the direct, "want to suck each others' weenies" approach a few times, and it worked - but that was always with boys I'd done stuff with already, like mutual j/o.)

Finding my Big 3 Books (as I came to think of them) focused my desires and gave me the technical information I wanted. It was empowering, as the psychobabble jargon would call it today. It's still slightly amazing to me that I found them - and that the information in those books was a near-perfect match for my needs.

The family across the street consisted of the lady I mentioned - a single mom whose husband had died earlier - and her three kids, who were all older than me. I don't even remember much about that family. They hadn't been living in the house all that long - two or three years, no longer than that. The kids, two girls and a boy, were all teenagers, and I don't recall them being at home much. We younger kids played with them a few times. I remember that one of them had a skateboard (not as common back in the late 60s and early 70s as they are today), and they let us ride it down the street or sidewalk on several occasions. They also had a badminton net in the back yard, and I remember playing badminton with one of the girls, Kathy, and almost beating her. That made me feel good, competing against somebody six years older than me and almost winning.

This lady had been widowed young. There was neighborhood talk among the grownups about her late husband's unfortunate death - he had been electrocuted while working in the basement of a house they'd lived in previously. We kids picked up on that, of course. I remember feeling sympathy for the family, along with some curiosity about details, such as who found the body and what it had looked like, and whether smoke had come out of his ears, like in the cartoons... You know how kids are: death itself is quite abstract, but the gruesome details are fascinating.

As it happened, this lady got engaged, several months before the events in question. In connection with that, they were moving to another part of the city. All this emerged in neighborhood gossip among the grownups, again. I didn't pay much attention at the time. I wasn't close to anyone in the family, so it was no big deal. I do remember idly thinking that, if the house was vacant after they left, I might try to sneak in with some friends and explore.

I was at school when the movers came and started loading the truck. This wasn't a big house, and there wasn't much stuff inside, I suppose. (I probably had gone inside while they were living there, but I can't remember anything about it.) At any rate, the house was vacant when I got home. It was an overcast, cold day in the winter - I don't remember when this happened exactly, but it was deep wintertime in the South, when the temperature actually got down below freezing at night. (Go ahead and laugh, Canadians!)

Our elementary school was directly behind our house, and my route home didn't take me around to the front yard; so I didn't notice their empty house right away - or the huge pile of unwanted junk the family had deposited on the curb for trash pickup. I'd been home about an hour, I think, when the doorbell rang. I answered the door. It was my friend Ricky from up the street. He wanted to ride bikes or play catch or something. But as soon as I opened the door, I had a different idea - over Ricky's right shoulder, I saw the pile of junk on the curb. It looked inviting.

I said to Ricky, "Hey! - let's see what the neighbors threw out!" I pointed, and he turned and looked. He hadn't noticed the pile before, apparently. (Ricky was a good friend and a good kid, but perceptiveness and quick-thinking weren't his strong suits.) He said, "Um... okay, sure." He wasn't overly enthusiastic. I'm sure in hindsight he would rather have ridden bikes or played catch. But he willingly ran across the street with me to the pile of potential treasures.

The pile was as high as our heads, and spread out over about a dozen feet along the curb, I'd guess. Alot of the stuff was indeed junk, and not even interesting junk - rolls of old yellowed kitchen shelf-paper, furnace filters, ancient cans of paint (back then, paint went into the landfill - no hazardous-waste recycling centers yet...)

We poked around for maybe five minutes. Then Ricky said, "This is boring... Want to do something else?" I said "Just a minute - there might be better stuff we haven't seen yet." Ricky said, "Well, I'm going home - come over when you're done screwing around with this junk." And he walked off.

Well, he missed his big chance by about five minutes, unfortunately for him, and for me. Right after he left, I starting pulling apart a big messy pile of old magazines. I was really after a lamp I saw back behind the magazines. To the right of the magazines was a stack of old paperback books, and at first I paid no attention to them. I wasn't much of a reader in those days, and books held little interest for me. I was tossing magazines aside to get a clear path to that lamp, and at some point I must have knocked the stacks of paperbacks over. After a minute I reached the lamp - which, predictably, turned out to be broken and useless. After examining it briefly, I started backing out of the opening. I had my head turned, and my eye fell on the disorderly paperbacks. The nearest paperback was boring - a Western. The title of the next paperback made me freeze in my tracks. It was Variations in Sexual Behavior.

I knew what "variations" meant, but not clearly. I damn sure knew what sexual behavior meant! I grabbed that book so fast, it's lucky it didn't disintegrate. I looked at the cover for a few seconds - it showed the title and author (Frank S. Caprio, M.D.), and nothing more that I recall. Then I opened the thing up. It was of course what I thought of as a grownup's book - tiny print, no pictures, big words, and all that. The page I was looking at, about one-third through the book, was a chapter title. I can't remember the exact wording, but it contained the phrase "A Case-study of Auto-Fellatio."

I had no clue what "fellatio" meant, auto or non-auto. The only thing I knew about "auto", was automobile. I was a little disappointed at that moment - I guess I was expecting a drawing of two people screwing, or something like that. I knew it was a sex book, of course, so I expected maybe it had something to do with sex in a car. But it seemed to be full of big words - and as I've mentioned, being dyslexic, I'm a slow reader.

But it was about sex, after all, and I was an extremely curious boy on that subject. I sat back on my heels and started reading the chapter. And quickly realized what it was about. It was a case-study - basically a transcript of a patient's comments to his psychiatrist (Dr. Caprio, I presume). After some uninteresting preliminaries, he got into his childhood. He talked about sex. He talked about boys. He talked about... YES! Having sex with boys!! That book was mine.

Around the third page into the chapter, this patient started getting real detailed. I read and re-read that book so many times subsequently, that I can't recall exactly which case-study went with which patient. Anyway, around that third or fourth page, this guy explained what auto-fellatio was. In fact, he described it in great detail. He introduced it by saying: "One of my biggest fantasies was to be able to suck my own c*ck." (This book used a fair number of bad words - including several I'd never heard before - but followed the traditional custom of using asterisks to replace vowels, so as not to offend the reader's delicate senses...) Well, he tried to suck his own c*ck. And he succeeded.

That was something I had never even thought about. I literally had no idea it could be done. It seemed incredibly difficult to me. Now, I had never seen a grown man's erect penis before - not even pictures, much less real life. My imagination at that point gave me an image of a little boy's erection, somewhat bigger and with some sparse hair around the base - like Joe's or J.J.'s dicks (the two pubescent boys at Y-camp). I had trouble visualizing how this guy could suck his own dick. Nevertheless, I didn't doubt the story for a second. (I got around to trying it myself, a couple of weeks later. I wasn't anywhere near close, of course; and it felt silly to try. I gave up on trying to suck my own dick until after puberty commenced and I grew to a more realistic length. I tried it again, alot of times, then. Still never succeeded.)

I sat there for some time, I have no idea how long, flipping through that book and reading at random. I had, of course, gotten a boner immediately upon reading the book - it might have happened as soon as I saw the title, though I can't recall. I was feeling my stiffie through my pants as I read. I would call this the first time I had done any kind of masturbation while looking at sexually-explicit material. None of us boys ever did that while looking at Playboys, as I recall, although I'm sure we all had juvenile hard-ons.

After a while, I started getting a little chilled sitting there in the cold and damp. I decided to set my book aside and poke around a little more. I was so excited by my find, that it didn't occur to me right away that there might be other books of its kind. I set the book down near the edge of the curb and continued looking for useful junk. I was a sexual kid, but I also liked playing in junkpiles. I'd already seen most of the stuff by this time, so it was a quick wrap-up. I spent about 10 more minutes looking, and eventually found some cool stuff, like an ultraviolet tanning light and a hot plate (both of which actually worked after I tinkered with them, later on.)

It finally occurred to me, just when I was thinking about taking my treasures home, that I hadn't seen any of those other books (except the Western), and that I might be missing some interesting stuff. I poked my head back into the area with the magazines, and saw maybe 8-10 other books, scattered. I began picking up each one to see if any were about sex, or anything else interesting. I would've accepted books about something like space travel, say; but I was hoping to find more sex books. I wasn't disappointed. After a few more Westerns and cheap mysteries and romances, I found the second of my Big Three books - and then, almost immediately, the third.

The second book was a big thick one, with even smaller print. The title was My Secret Life: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman. I almost skipped it, because it looked like a boring biography. It was indeed a biography - but it was anything but boring. It was a sexual autobiography, written by that popular author "Anonymous". This particular "Anonymous" was, as the title suggested, a gentleman (wealthy) in late 19th-century Victorian England. He was a thorough libertine, in philosophy and behavior. His entire life was preoccupied with sex. His earliest sexual memories involved things like his governess playing with his penis at age two. He began having intercourse and getting BJs at an extremely young age - 6 or 7 years old, I think. He had every kind of sex in every imaginable way: with women, girls, men, groups, and animals; in every imaginable position; with all kinds of props; in all kinds of places... there was spanking, dress-up games, alot of fetishes... Oh yeah - and there were boys. Quite a few boys. Most of the boy-sex took place with friends when he was a boy, but he continued throughout his adult life.

I was cold by this time, so I didn't spend much time looking at the autobiography. I set it down next to the first book and kept looking. As soon as I went back to the pile of books, I saw the third in my Big 3 trilogy. The title was Sex and the Single Man, by Dr. Albert Ellis, Ph.D. Of course the title grabbed my attention, and I grabbed the book. I didn't even look at this one - just put it with the others, and kept looking. I looked through the remaining books for a few more minutes, but apparently I'd found all the good stuff - just more Westerns and the like. Apparently this lady (or someone in the house) liked Westerns. I don't recall any books except cheap fiction in the bunch, other than my Big 3.

All this time while I was exploring, cars were going past on the street; but nobody passed by me on foot - or if anyone did, I was too absorbed to notice. None of my neighborhood friends showed up; Ricky had gone inside, it seemed. My first thought was to share my great find with the other kids. Problem: That would mean ringing doorbells or knocking. What if someone's mom opened the door, and there I was with my books? I mean, a kid carrying non-school-related books around was suspicious to begin with. And the titles of at least two of these three were dead giveaways.

I tried to come up with ideas on how to round up my friends - the usual stuff like throwing gravel at the window - but none seemed feasible under the circumstances. I decided to take my stuff home and hide it somewhere in my bedroom, and show it off later. So I grabbed my books and stuck them inside my jacket under my arm, got the other junk I'd found, and went across the street and inside. I figured I should head straight upstairs before my mom or brothers got nosy. My mom was watching TV in the living room. She didn't get up; she just yelled at me to walk the dog. Fortunately, there wasn't a clear view into the entryway from where she sat, or I might have gotten questions. I hustled up the stairs and into my room and shut the door.

My bedroom was pretty small, but very cluttered, so I had alot of good hiding places. I found a spot underneath my chest of drawers, behind my Little League glove and stuff like that, and shoved the books back there. I was dying to lie down on my bed and do some reading and some self-stimulation. But I knew my mom would some up and roust me if I didn't do what she wanted. So I went down, got the leash, and the dog and I went for a walk.

Still no kids out; but now I could at least ring some doorbells without worry. I went to Ricky's house first. I wanted to show Ricky in particular, and not just because he was with me for the initial search through the junkpile - Ricky was the first boy who let me play with his erect penis, and vice-versa. I was more than willing to share this big new step in sexual discovery with him - at least discussion, possibly demonstration. But he was playing Monopoly with his brother and sister, and didn't want to stop. And I couldn't exactly say, "Forget Monopoly - I wanna show you a much better game."

I went to two other friends' houses - not home. It was late afternoon by this time, about dinnertime, so I gave up and went home. I wiggled alot during dinner, as I recall.

This was a school night. The bad news: I wasn't supposed to spend much time with friends; no more chances that day to show them what I'd found. The good news: I was supposed to be up in my room, doing homework instead. Possibly my mom wondered why I was so anxious to go up and get to it, instead of TV - if so, she didn't comment.

I went up and shut the door. That wasn't standard, but I could always use the excuse (and had in the past) that my younger brothers were making a racket. They weren't; they were downstairs watching TV. But it pays to be prepared.

My books were waiting for me under the chest of drawers. I got out Variations (it was always my favorite of the three, right from the beginning), lay back on my bed, and began reading. I put my knees up to hide the book in case anyone walked in - and also to hide the physical reaction that had already occurred between my legs.

I can never remember which portion of the book I read on which occasion. It was broken up into case-studies of maybe 10-20 pages each. As the name indicated, the case-studies were all "variations" from normal heterosexual adult intercourse. That was a wide range. Back then, preferring oral sex to intercourse was apparently considered a significant variation. Oral sex and anal sex case-studies were plentiful.

Some "variations" were more exotic to me. There were some bestiality sections, and some sections on urine and scat fetishes, but I spent no time on those - I don't think I ever read any of them all the way through. Incest was a big topic. I did read those, but the parent-child incest stories turned me off. Sibling-incest was a little more intriguing, but there weren't many of those. And I'm sure there were others I don't remember.

But one of the major variations discussed was childhood sexuality, both heterosexual and homosexual. Those sections - and many others - featured the biggest turn-on in the entire book to me: kids having sex with each other. In many cases, adults had sex with those kids, too; or sometimes, the kids grew up to be adults who did that. I was interested in those stories, too, although I thought it was kind of weird that any kid would want to do it with an adult. Any case-study including kids, pre-pubescent boys especially, snagged my attention. I read and re-read those avidly over the years, and never grew tired of most of them. I identified with those adventurous boys, and felt I was one of them in desire - and not long after, in behavior.

Looking back, I don't see that interest in kids having sex as anything except identifying with myself and my peer group. I think those chapters were intended to explain pedophilia. (It was, after all, a book aimed at adult readers.) To me, there's a tremendous difference between two kids having sex and any situation where an adult gets involved. Unfortunately, nowadays any discussion of childhood sexuality is assumed to be for adults' (i.e., pedophiles') benefit. I wish adults would let kids be kids, and give them credit for thinking... But I digress.

I'll describe my Variations book and the others in more detail later. Meanwhile, back on my bed ...

... I was reading a case-study - don't know what it was about, but probably a boy or boys were in it - and getting very aroused. Soon I slid my hand into my pants and underwear, and was feeling my hard-on while I read. I wanted badly to pull my pants and underwear down, and masturbate freely right there. This was a brand-new and utterly cool experience to me - reading erotica and masturbating. I wanted that so badly, at that moment. But it was too risky. I didn't dare lock the door - if someone came, that would cause questioning. And if I didn't, getting caught literally with my pants down and that book in one hand and my boner in the other hand (well, three fingers actually), would've also been difficult.

One of the great things about prepubescent orgasms - you CAN do it in your underwear. No mess to worry about. It wasn't as much fun, because your hand got cramped, and you couldn't rub your weenie just right. As I've said, until I "learned how" from my books, my jack-off technique consisted of squeezing and rubbing and general rough handling; and that required room to maneuver... But there was no way I was going to go without an orgasm. So I got determined and began feeling my erection vigorously as I read. It didn't take long before I got the "big tickle", as I thought of it then. I arched my back and felt it shoot throughout my body. Usually, while masturbating I thought of doing something with one of my friends, or with a girl, or pulled out a memory like the Y-camp stuff. But this time I was reading and getting into the book's description. It was utterly different and exciting as hell.

(Interesting side note: For a long time, when I'd fantasize about having sex with someone, it would be someone very specific if it was with a boy; but if it was a girl, she would be faceless and nameless. I'm not sure why, but I can venture three guesses: (1) My actual memories featured alot more boy- experiments than girl experiments; (2) I had more friends who were boys, and could be specific in my fantasy-partner; or (3) maybe I just wanted boy-sex more then male-female sex at that point.)

One orgasm doesn't have to be the end for a 10 y/o boy, of course. So I kept reading, kept jacking off. It did take longer to come the second time; but it was just as good, if not better. I think I rolled over on my right side that time (I'm a left-handed masturbator). Orgasms while I'm flat on my back have never been my preference, for some reason...

After the second orgasm that evening, I felt the edge had gone off my excitement. And I really did have homework to do. My 5th-grade teacher was actually a nice lady, but you didn't want to show up without your homework. Back then, in the South, corporal punishment in schools was by no means rare - and I'd been whacked with the principal's paddle more than once already. So I closed up my book and put it back in its hiding place. I thought about getting out one or both of the other two, just out of curiosity about the contents, but decided that was enough for the evening. I got out my books and went to work. I have no recollection of what I did for homework that evening. I'm sure it wasn't nearly as interesting.

The next day at school, I couldn't wait to tell my friends I had found some genuine sex books. I didn't get the chance till recess. A bunch of us were playing tetherball, so private conversations were impossible on the playground. But as we lined up to go back in, I got in line with Bobby and Eric (Eric's dad was our unwitting Playboy-supplier) and whispered my news to them. They got wide-eyed, and both immediately demanded to come over after school. I was delighted to oblige.

After school, we all met outside and ran to my house. This was one of my mom's afternoon workdays, and we would have the house to ourselves until 5:15, when she brought my brothers home from my grandparents' house, where they went after school on the two days a week she worked afternoons. (I was theoretically supposed to go there too, but I rarely did; I never burned the house down or anything, so my mom grumbled but didn't crack down on that policy.)

On the way, as we ran, I described how I'd found the books, and what they were about, more or less. We wasted no time getting up to my room and retrieving the stash of books from their not-so-secret hiding place. (Despite the fact that I hid those books under my chest of drawers for over five years, nobody ever found them - or never said so to me, if they did). I gave the other two books to the other two boys, and kept Variations for myself. Eric sat on the floor with Sex and the Single Man; Bobby sat on the radiator with My Secret Life (until his butt got too hot and he moved to the floor); and I sat on the bed with Variations.

Almost immediately, Eric began commenting: "Oh, neat!"; "Hey! It tells how to fuck girls!" - that kind of thing. I had barely glanced at Sex and the Single Man, so this was new info to me. Eric proceeded to read several passages out loud. The only passage I remember specifically is one in which the author said, "Explain to her [your girlfriend] that losing her virginity is a good thing and not a bad thing, if she's sad afterwards" (or words to that effect).

Bobby had been frowning at his book the whole time. My Secret Life was a difficult read, since it was written in 19th-century British English. And Bobby was a slow reader, like me. But after Eric had been reading aloud for a few minutes, Bobby put the book down to listen. So did I. This was good stuff. I hadn't realized that Sex and the Single Man was a manual on how to seduce women; but that's what it was. (I since found out it was a rather well- known book - easily the best-known of the three.)

I hadn't planned on bringing my friends over so I could get them to have sex or j/o with me. (And, in case you're wondering, we didn't, not that day. As it happened, I never did anything sexual with Bobby at all, beyond looking through naughty books and magazines. Eric and I jerked off together a few times subsequently, including the first circle-jerk for both of us; but nothing more.) I had brought them over to share something fun and exciting. Fun stuff was always more fun with your friends than alone, whether it's soccer or ice cream or sex. I did look periodically to see if they had erections, as I did. They didn't, or else their erections were trapped in their underwear, or maybe they had small weenies.

After Eric had read aloud to us for maybe 6-8 minutes, I said, "How about yours, Bobby? Any good stuff in there?" He looked a little disgusted and said, "It's all words I don't understand." I said, "Yeah, that's a hard book, but it's got some good parts... But let me read to y'all out of mine." And I proceeded to read aloud.

I remember my story from that afternoon: it was about an 8-y/o boy who went out in the woods with two other boys, 10 y/o and 12 y/o, and a 12 y/o girl (ages approximate - it's been a while...) That was always one of my favorite stories. The two other boys were brothers, and the girl was his girlfriend. She let her boyfriend fuck her out in the woods while the other two boys watched, then she let the 10 y/o brother fuck her. The older brother put on a rubber before he fucked her, which baffled the 9 y/o because he didn't know what a rubber was. (I remember thinking, "Where the hell do 12 y/o boys get rubbers?" I wasn't aware of gas-station restrooms and the like. Condom machines weren't common in the South back then.) After the others were done, the 8-y/o wanted to fuck her too - he didn't know what it was all about, but the older boys had done it and it looked like fun. The girl told him he wasn't old enough, but let him look at her pussy and feel it. Then they went to another part of the woods, and both brothers fucked her again.

There were other parts to this story - for one thing, the boyfriend had previously fucked her standing up in a shed at school with no door, with about 5-6 younger kids watching, including the 8-y/o narrator. All of this excited the hell out of me. I seriously thought about asking Eric and Bobby if they wanted to jack off - if they didn't know how, I could show them... But I didn't. Eric and Bobby were listening intently as I read, stumbling over the words - but I noticed, even in my excitement, that neither was as excited as I was. It just didn't seem like the right time... And I had a dim sense that if they weren't ready, it might scare them off permanently. I didn't always have thoughts like that to check my impulses, but sometimes I did, fortunately.

We talked about my story, and about the books - I don't remember what we said specifically - just 10 y/o boys, having a 10-y/o-boy sex conversation. After a little of that, Bobby asked, "Well, what else did you find over there?" So I showed them the ultraviolet lamp and the hot plate, and we got busy trying to make those work. And that was the afternoon, really - after the appliances refused to work, we went down and watched TV for a while, and Bobby left, and a little later Eric left.

The boy-girl in the woods story had gotten me hot. I was calmer after we went downstairs, but there was a lingering heat nonetheless. And it was still around an hour before the rest of the family came home. I knew my chance, and I took it.

I went back upstairs, picked up my book (we had neglected to put them away), got my Levis and underwear pulled down to my ankles, sat on the edge of my bed, found the story of the three boys and the girl, and beat off while reading it. My first full-fledged masturbation with a porno book, as I later came to think of it. This was better than the previous evening. My hand wasn't cramped, and the exposure to the air felt good. I've always liked looking at my hand and my penis while I did it.

Like the previous evening, I did it twice in a row without stopping. I was considering a third time, but I didn't have a clock in there and wasn't paying attention to time, and thought that the family might show up soon. I was hot enough to do it, though. And I remember Eric creeping into my fantasies that afternoon. He turned into one of the boys in the story, although I'm vague on which one, that time.

So that was it for the day - and for the next few days. The weather turned nice, so I spent them outside doing other stuff. I didn't touch the books (or even jack off as I recall) till after the weekend. When I did pick up the books again, however, within a couple of days I discovered a section in either Variations or Single Man that explained in great, step-by-step detail, how to masturbate. (I can't remember which book I found it in first; all three described the process, in fact.) Not long after that, I told (and soon after, showed) my friends how to do what I'd learned. That's really the next section in my autobiography, so I'll pick up at that point.

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What ever happened to the Big 3? Those three books lasted me for years and years, till they finally fell apart when I was around 15 y/o. I know it was after Kenny and I had anal sex, because I remember "consulting" them for how- to advice. In fact, I remember when Variations fell apart, because Kenny and I were on my bed reading it at the time, and feeling each other, and things got physical between us, with the book as a casualty - it got under the blanket somehow, and fell apart when one or both of us was twisting around on top of the covers. It was sort of sad, pulling down the blanket to find out what we'd been lying on, and seeing the pages all scattered and crumpled... But I wasn't down about it, not for long - I'd more or less outgrown the books by that time. And what a way to go. I guess this was a fitting end for it - mangled during boy-sex :).

My Secret Life got ruined not long after that, when I accidentally left it on the windowsill by my bed one rainy night, and the rain started blowing in through the open window. It was still readable, but pages were stuck together and it was all swollen and warped. I finally buried it in the trash outside one night.

As for Sex and the Single Man, I can't even remember. It fades out of the picture at some point. I had the most detailed how-to-do-it advice of the three on anal sex, and I distinctly recall reading it for that purpose during the week or so before Kenny and I did it. And I know I showed it to him, along with the others. Kenny wasn't too interested in Sex and the Single Man, but then Kenny never was interested in anything to do with women. I recall pages coming out during that time, so it was about gone. Maybe I threw it out too, finally. Or maybe my one of my brothers found it, or my mom. (Probably not - I think I'd remember if it had just vanished).

That wasn't the Big 3's first trip to our trash, by the way. Several times I felt mega-guilty about sex and I threw them away. Within an hour, I always rescued them again. I felt guilty about sex a few times back then, but never for long.

I owe my Big 3 books alot of the credit (or blame) for the way my life went over the next few years. I had the desire (as far back as I can remember) and the awareness (from Y-camp onwards), but not the know-how. They supplied that missing element. From this point on, I was ready to share. Yes, we finally get back to Ricky, too. I didn't forget to share my prize with him. I was loyal to my friends.