__________________________________________________________________
“Girls change when they get older" the father said.
“Change?”
the boy questioned,
Oh, God!
Inhaling…
“Tell you what,”
…exhaling.
“To make it easier,
let’s not call them
men or women,
girls or boys.”
Inhaling,
“boys are male
and girls female.”
Exhaling,
“Okay! Understand?”
“Yeah,” the boy said.
The father doubted it.
___________________________________________________________________
Sex Ed 2 : Circa 1944-2
Opening the book,
Opening “The Joy of Sex”
to a pre-marked page,
“Okay, then,”
the father said dubiously,
“here’s the difference.”
The boy stared at black ink
line drawings of a man…
correction;
line drawings
of a male and female
with lines pointing to various
parts of their bodies at one end
and to a list of words at the other.
Using the eraser end of the pencil as a pointer,
tapping the Male’s “Y”,
taking a deep breath,
along with a deep draw
of the cigarette,
“This is called, uh…”
Prick
Having learned a few things on the street,
prick, the boy thought,
but said nothing.
“This is called, uh,”
blowing smoke,
“the penis and,
besides using it to urinate from…”
“Urinate?” the boy questioned.
Sighing,
“Urinate is when you got to pee,
only that’s really called urinating.”
Stubbing the cigarette out,
“But besides using your penis to urinate from,”
Thinking, Oh, God!
“When a man and a, uh…”
Coming to the hard part,
the father lit another.
“When a male and a female are in bed together…”
Inhaling deeply, buying a moment, exhaling.
“ ‘it’, the man’s penis gets big and hard
and when that happens it’s called…”
A boner, the boy thought,
“an erection.” The father said.
Having witnessed this phenomena,
a number of times,
the boy’s interest now piqued,
“Like in the morning,”
he asked,
“when I gott’a, uh,
what you said.”
“ ‘Urinate’. Yes… well no!
Not like when you’ve got to urinate…”
Wondering how to explain this:
“Well, it’s kind of like when you gotta go,
but when a male and female are in bed together
the male doesn’t really have to, uh, urinate.”
“ ‘It’ only looks like he’s gotta?”
“Yes. Uh, kind of.”
Oh, God! The father a bit confused.
Dragging deeply on the cigarette,
thinking it best to take a different tack.
“We’ll get back to that…”
The boy thoroughly confused,
questioning:
“The male’s, uh… what’ch’ma’call it
looks like he’s gotta, you know,
but doesn’t really have to?”
His hand pressed onto his forehead once again.
“Yes, we’ll get back to that later.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Relieved at changing the subject,
pointing the eraser end of the pencil
to the upper portion of the female line drawing,
“These two, uh, things are called…”
Titties, the boy thought.
“These two, uh, things are called breasts
and when a female is young her chest
looks like yours,
but when she,
when the female gets older …”
on a roll now,
“when she,
the female gets older, oh,
maybe when she’s fourteen or fifteen,
they…”
“The female’s chests?”
The father’s chain of thought broken,
“Uh, yeah, her chest…
uh, breasts!
The female’s breasts start to grow
And begin to look like…”
tapping the eraser, “this.”
“But why?” The boy asked.
“What are they for?”
“For one thing,” the father smiled,
“they sure look nice.”
Seriously now,
“But God really made ‘em for feeding babies.”
“Babies! ‘For feeding babies’?”
the boy asked incredulously.
“How?”
Knowing he was going to ask....
