We found Hard Love magazine in the woods behind Rich’s house, riding out the winter in a pile of wet leaves. The melting snow had swollen it to three times its original size; it was fat as the yellow pages of a medium-sized city. The cover, once glossy and crisp as an invitation, was faded and green with mildew. The big blonde centerfold gave no hint of being anything but pleased with the arrangement.

Sections stuck together in twenty page clumps. With gloves squeezed under our armpits, we breathed warmth and dexterity into our cupped hands and carefully peeled pages apart like backings from bumper stickers—an electric suction sizzled as each page released from the next. The ink had transferred from page to page, leaving half-paragraphs of trashy letters tattooed to glorious thighs and backsides, leaving hourglass silhouettes of chests/waists/hips to wind their way through penile-enhancement ads. The pin-up on page forty-two was the ghost of page forty-three.

Hard Love must have belonged to one of the seminary students from the Pontifical College across the woods, evidence of man’s lustful nature, shamefully but strategically expelled from the garden some autumn afternoon, hidden in a spot easily found come spring when thoughts turn.

Each of us had a hiding place for his ill-gotten porno mags. Under the bed was the choice of amateurs—kids who didn’t know better or had parents that didn’t give a damn. The more sophisticated seventh grader went the “Princess and the Pea” route, sliding his stash between the mattress and box spring. This maintained the advantage of easy accessibility, but still left him prone to discovery by bed-making moms or nosy sisters.

I hid Hard Love in the heating vent under my desk. After unscrewing the vent cover from the base of the wall, I found a perfect, magazine-sized platform set slightly below floor level. Safe, secure, brilliant. Of course, what this spot gained in security, it lost in convenience. I had to bother with the screws every time I wanted access, meaning I had to find a place to stash the screwdriver. I hid the screwdriver under my mattress.

Screw. Nail. Drill. Pound. Four of us broke ground on a fort in Colin’s backyard, using the same materials as the new condos that were going up behind the hedges. After school we’d pillage the construction site, sneaking through the bushes with armloads of plywood, two by fours, linoleum flooring, and Pink Panther insulation. Our fort was a ramshackle version of the luxury units that were taking shape behind us.

We spray painted the exterior of the fort with stars, lightning bolts, and the KISS logo. Inside was a collage of sports posters: Archie Griffin and Johnny Bench and Fran Tarkenton, a nod to the heroes of the day and safe cover should curious dads come knocking. An observant dad might notice that the posters were hung by two tacks, not four. An especially observant dad, were he to lift the bottom edge of any random poster would have found the spoils of a carefully executed raid of Kevin’s older brother’s Playboy collection. He would have found Miss May under Mr. Griffin, Bo Derek under Johnny Bench, and The Girls of the PacTen under Fran Tarkenton. The neighbors called the fort an eyesore. Our parents made us tear it down.

Undoing is contagious, and wrecking the fort gave us a taste for blood. In the skeleton corners of half-built condos, sharing the seven or eight cans of Rolling Rock we’d stolen from the crisper of Tom’s Mom’s rumpus-room refrigerator, we became masters of the deconstructive arts. We stuffed parka pockets with baseball-sized rocks. Threw newly minted curve balls through virginal windows. Tore up flooring and insulation with carelessly abandoned claw hammers. Ramrodded two by fours into cheap drywall. I dare you to try to punch a hole in that wall. Come on, pussy, I dare you. So we threw fists with wrinkled nosed determination, and skinny legged force. We licked scraped knuckles with candy-coated tongues.

Blow Pops. Bazooka Joe. Sugar Babies. Welcome to 7-Eleven. No stealing. This Means YOU.

Ever-teased by the magazine rack behind the counter. Playboy. Penthouse. Hustler. Oui. An all-star team of unattainability, gift-wrapped in cellophane. Cover girls with business ends airbrushed to mere suggestion. No matter how long I stared, not a nipple in sight. Not one hint of precious, goose-bumped areola. Like my sister’s Barbie.

We heard that every Thursday the 7-Eleven employees tossed the old magazines in the dumpster. We also heard that our hometown, Columbus, was number one on the Russian bomb list. We were optimists.

Feet first into the dumpster. Chest deep in soggy cardboard and acrid muck. Surfing a rusty cage of polyurethane waves. Riding the slippery swells of sanitation. Danger of suffocation. Keep away from Children. Treading. Bobbing. Going under. Over. Under. Drowning in the quicksand of spent coffee grounds. Do not play on or around. Surfacing. Scrambling. Can’t touch bottom. Can’t reach ledge. Wet. Wet. Everything wet. Stained. Stale. Sour. Everything rotten. Everything. Hard, moldy hot dog buns. The algae-slicked stones of this sea. But what of the orphaned hot dogs? Three for 99 cents. Bait for the rats? No. No rats. Absolutely no rats. Maggots? Expected. Mice? Maybe. But no rats. Please, God. No rats.

Bust:

Hips:

Waist:

Height:

Weight:

Birthplace:

Turn-offs: Impatience, being teased, early alarms, and cruelty.

Turn-ons: Sensual music, satin sheets, black and white movies, and Thai curry

I’d never whacked off. I’d heard lots of beat-off braggadocio, of course. I’d even joined in with war stories of my own. Lies. This was my first real attempt.

My mom was dropping off my sister at swimming lessons, so I was home alone, up in my bedroom. The screwdriver, heating vent cover, and four loose screws were scattered on the carpet. On my dresser, between the Kleenex box and the Vaseline jar, Hard Love lay spread open to the staples. Puberty in still life. I popped the lid on the Vaseline and slid two fingers through the cool gel. It smelled of diapers and sickness and industry. It smelled like Gary, Indiana. I wiggled my Levi’s down around my ankles and reached through the strange hole in the front of my Fruit of the Looms.

I couldn’t do it. First came the fear: Oh, Jesus. They’re gonna come home early and catch me pants-down and Vaseline-handed. Then came the guilt: I’m going to hell. Or blind. Then came the shame: This is disgusting. I’m disgusting. A sick, petroleum-jellied pervert.

Whacking off wasn’t worth the hassle. I cleaned up and went downstairs to watch re-runs of The Jeffersons.

My first orgasm came during an algebra test.

Chewing my pencil, I stared impotently at those equations, at those sets and subsets, at those mysterious X’s and Y’s for 15, 20, 30 minutes. I couldn’t make sense of that alphabet soup. How much time is left? Shit. Think. Okay. y = mx + b. So if the slope is two, and the Y-intercept is three, then X must be…X must be…Nothing. I got nothing. Shit. Shit. Ten questions left. Ten questions in ten minutes. Just focus. Focus.

A throbbing ball of anxiety radiated from my innermost core, from depths I was unaware of, sending panicked charges to nerve endings in the most remote provinces of my world. Heat. Magma. Surging. Through the lower mantle, through the upper mantle. Erupting toward the surface. Somebody call the emergency squad. My heart is about to explode. My heart…about to…about to…and then letting go. Just letting go. Letting go.

I smelled something sick and sweet, and I was certain everyone in the class knew. They’d felt the earth move. They were knocked sideways by the jarring shift in the continental and oceanic plates. They saw my hot, red face. Twenty-five classmates watched me die my little death.

Covering my crotch with my test sheets, I took the long way around to the front of the class. I slid the papers face down across the teacher’s desk and excused myself to the bathroom. Then I stashed my underpants in the garbage can. I buried them deep, under three feet of crumpled paper towels.