The Best Little Boy in the World Read Free Page A

four, I would guess, I was sitting comfortably in my little wicker-weave itty-bitty chair, contemplating the Howdy-Doodie linoleum floor of my room, or whatever, when I was called to the dinner table. We had company that evening. I sat in my grown-up silver-silk upholstered dining-room chair— and it felt prickly-uncomfortable, as though I were sitting bare bottom on a pile of hay. Now that was funny, because if anything, this cushioned chair should have been more comfortable than my wicker-weave chair—and I made a number of remarks on that very discrepancy.
    My mother said I could go get the other chair, and followed me into my room, whereupon she lowered my little-boy-in-corduroy pants and—well, I was amazed! I had no idea I had done that. Mother took care of it quickly, without a word—but I was mortified! I could think of nothing so vile as what I had done—it was Goliath's laughable sin IN THREE DIMENSIONS, yet, and I determined to be very careful from then on. Another slip like that and the BLBITW could just throw in the towel, for crying out loud.
    Some time later, around the age of twelve, at sleep-away camp, I deduced the meaning of the word "fart," though it was too disgusting a word ever to pass from my lips. At the same time, I fairly quickly learned that "f--k you" was the single worst thing in the world that could be said by or to anyone, even though on rare occasions of rage, when I really wanted to shock and terrify my fellow campers, in the heat of some truly embittered dispute, I could bring myself to come out with it in a stage whisper. Of course, that utterance was possible only because I hadn't the faintest idea what it meant. Nor was I about to ask anyone. / was no fool, aged twelve. Aged fourteen. Aged sixteen. Around sixteen I suppose I learned what it meant. (And I learned how irrational, illogical, impossible, therefore, was the accepted response—I'LL BET YOU'D LIKE TO-when spoken by one boy to another.) But having some intellectual knowledge of the word's clinical definition was different from my intimate, olfactory understanding of that other, unspeakably disgusting word.
    Now, after all that buildup, I can't honestly tell you that I remember the occasion of my first deflation. I do remember, in general terms, a period of a few months around my sophomore year in college, when, having once given just the tiniest, most hesitating, little-by-little testing sort of vent to what must have been extraordinary pressure farther than usual from the nearest men's room—on a geological field trip perhaps?—having thus once experimented and found, mirabile dictu, that I could relieve myself in one dimension without going 3-D, I began gradually to become bolder and bolder and in less than a year I had it down to a science.
    Of course, I only did it in private— never where there was even the remotest chance that-BLBITW! ROLL DOWN YOUR WINDOW! And to this day, as I still struggle to get out the word, I stand forever in awe of my high school classmates who would actively seek an audience while they rolled back on their shoulders, lit a match, and made like some kind of perverted tapered-chinos dragon....
    But if I don't remember the exact occasion and circumstances of my first gaseous relief, I could write a 1,000-page monograph on the occasion of my first masturbation.
    I did it by accident, actually; without even using my—look, Ma!—hands. And I'll tell you, I was one happy eighteen-year-old boy. The orgasm—the famous, fantastic unforgettable, hold-it-back-with-every-muscle-and-nerve-in-your-body (well, I-thought-I-would-be-wetting-my-bed, which-at-eighteen-would-have-been-awful) first orgasm—was a degree of six-feet-off-the-ground ecstasy and relief you experience only once. Yes. This was no eleven-year-old's first dribble. I had been saving this, maturing, building the tensions FOR YEARS! So, yes, the orgasm itself was A-double-plus-WOW. But that was really insignificant in light of the