From My very minimal, mostly fantasy, love life before Mary

We moved to the Valley when I was almost finished with fifth grade. Some time after that dad started accumulating a collection on shelves in the garage of men’s magazines. Playboy was one, but others were a little raunchier and more explicit. This coincided with the onset of puberty for me. One day I brought one of them into my bedroom and looking at it became aroused, my first erection and ejaculation. I discovered masturbation. For the next few months I spent a lot of time in my bedroom and the bathroom with different issues from the treasure trove. I found ways to always hide the magazines and any evidence of the activity, and even convinced myself that my parents didn’t know what was going on.

How it shaped my life is it sidetracked my emerging sexuality away from being worked out in the real world of relationships. It doesn’t have much impact on who I am today, because even though it postponed my healthy sexual development, I corrected for that in the first year or two of my relationship with Mary, after laying the psychological foundation in the preceding years of therapy. How it changed my view of other people is it gave me a sense of empathy for my high school students who were in that awkward age of mature reproductive systems but socially not permitted to act as responsible adults. How it changed my view of the world is I realize the gap between adolescent energy and our culture’s immaturity in dealing with it represents an opportunity for the culture to mature.