Chapter 1

From my earliest memories, I have always seen myself in the company of women. That’s natural of course, being with my mother and her female relatives or friends. I cannot tell though whether I had an instinctual awareness of sex during those early ages or if I have transferred feelings and understandings picked up along the way. But I have always recognized the softness of women, their breasts, the touch of their hands, and the peculiar formation that was so often prominent where their legs joined when they were wearing jeans or shorts. The fact is I’m obsessed with women. I have always recognized the magnetic effect they have on men, their touching, handholding, love pecks, and coy looks of adoration.

I don’t suppose I am different from most males who have obsessed with sex the way I have. But even in retirement, the preoccupation seems to take up a disproportionate amount of my time. I wonder how many retirees have reached the point in their life where they can no longer achieve an erection without the aid of Viagra who feels the same way about it that I do. But when Pfizer introduced Viagra, the most successful pharmaceutical introduction in the history of the industry, my question was answered.

I was born on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. It was there where I had my first brush with sex if I can call it that. I was playing doctor with a girl named Mary who lived down the street. Though I saw little of her after that I remember her pink panties and that marvelous double-lipped thing between her legs. My mother was outside hanging up washed clothes. Mary and I were in the basement where the washing machine was. While Mary and I were in the throes of fondling each other’s naked parts, my brother discovered us. He was two years older than I and tended to dominate me. When he saw us with nothing on below our shirts he said to me, “If you don’t watch out Toby, I’ll tell Mom.” For some reason, it never struck me odd that he didn’t want to get in on the act. But he always liked to hold things over my head.

In less than a couple of weeks, the experience came back and strangely bit me. My brother and I shared a room. While I was getting clothes from the top drawer of our dresser in the morning Charlie, who had always had a mean streak, slammed the drawer on my fingers. When I cried out in pain Mom came charging up the stairs, opened the door, and said, “What’s going on in here?”

In pain I cried out, “Charlie slammed my fingers in the DRAWER.” Mom’s reaction was to cock her arm and start swinging her open hand at Charlie’s face.

But my brother’s reaction was lightning fast, “Oh YEAH?” he said, “Toby was FUCKING Mary.”

It was as if his comment had stopped time. As Mom’s hand was en route to his face it changed direction in mid-swing, slapping mine harder than she had ever done before. My crying and the evidence of my bruised finger had been trumped by the malicious charge leveled at me by my brother. In that instant, I got a clear picture of the seriousness of sex. There was no reaction on my mother’s part to the foul word that had just spilled from my brother’s young mouth. After that and unrelated Mary became a nonentity in at our house. For some reason I never saw her again—my mother had talked with her mother, and they kept us apart. I do remember those pink panties though as well as her beautiful, mysterious parts.

When we moved to the suburbs of Cleveland my brother and I shared a bedroom upstairs in the new house, right next to our parents.’ My bed was next to the wall that abutted Mom and Dad’s room. It was here where I began detecting unexplainable sounds coming through the uninsulated wall at night. The sounds and strange words always happened after we had gone to bed when our parents thought that we had gone to sleep. They were a total mystery to me until my flaccid peeing mechanism started becoming erect regularly. With my first erection, I experienced both fear and fascination. Our family was dealing with a plague of boils at the time. When my erstwhile benign penis began to swell, I thought it might have to do with that. When it filled and stretched to a frightening length and hardness, I feared that it might explode. Overcome with natural curiosity I began inspecting it more closely. When masturbation ensued, my penis did burst but not in the way I feared while fondling and stroking it so obsessively.

Within a week or two of my initial masturbation, my peer group whose aim was to gain some kind of sexual understanding through the liberal application of show and tell had all found a toy. There were five of us three circumcised and two uncut. Three were straight when hard, two were seriously curved, one upward and one to the right. Much later in our lives, we would learn that Wayne and Tommy had Peyronie’s disease, something that became a topic of conversation during the Clinton administration—the President had Peyronie’s. In secret gatherings, we showed our hardness with a sense of pride racing in masturbatory speed to see who could shoot first. Style points were awarded to the one who could squirt the furthest and/or cum in the most volume. “Jizz” became a much talked about subject.

Back to our bedroom: It was Charlie’s idea to keep a drinking glass on the table between our beds. Using it as a stethoscope against the wall we would listen to our parents in bed. Charlie said they were “fucking.” He told me about the connection between male and female organs. When we heard them in the act, we would both get hard and “jack off” while we listened—it just seemed the natural thing to do. Once I understood what the connection of male and female organs was about, I realized that my parents were “connecting” and began picturing how my father’s cock was plying Mom’s vagina. Fantasies about my mother and me connecting, in the same way, began within minutes of realizing that hard fact.

Sometimes while lying in bed and hearing the expressions of joy accompanied by squeaking bedsprings wafting through my wall, I would hump my pillow, imagining it was Mom. To enhance my pleasure, I cut the seam large enough to get my erect cock inside its feathered interior. When I came and pulled my pecker out of my pillow it resembled being tarred and feathered, the sticking medium being white rather than black.

Our house was situated on an acre of ground, most of which was grass that had to be cut each week during the summer. The first two years we lived there my brother and I mowed the grass with a push-type lawnmower. When Dad finally bought a power mower, and we were able to do it in less than half the time he made it clear that when we were finished with our lawn, we were free to ask neighbors if we could mow their lawns for money. Charlie opted out. He was fifteen and had gotten a regular summer job. By the time I was fourteen I had eleven customers. They liked the fast and efficient way I worked and were kind enough to recommend me to others. One day my best customer Mr. Bevans took me aside and said, “I know of a job that would be good for you Toby. The lawn is bigger than any you are doing now, and they will pay you well. It’s something you should consider.”

Ed Bevans was chairman of the maintenance committee at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church. It was a big church with a rectory where the two priests stayed. A convent housed six nuns: the Mother Superior and five sisters who administered and taught at St. Bartholomew’s pre-school. Bevans introduced me to the head priest, Father Desmond, and the Mother Superior, Sister Natalie. The priest was businesslike and quite friendly, he was from Ireland and had an Irish brogue. Sister Natalie, who was the direct opposite of Father Des, treated the interview very seriously. Never smiling she kept glancing between Father Desmond and me as if she didn’t trust him. I was sure she would not trust me either.

To my surprise, I was offered the job which paid me $1.00 an hour, ten cents over the minimum wage. I mowed the grass, pulled weeds in the flower beds, raked leaves in the fall, and did odd jobs in the rectory and convent. The church employed a full-time janitor maintained it. With my lawn at home, Ed Bevans’ and St Bart’s I had all I could handle and making a lot more money to boot.

For the first two weeks, Father Des and Sister Natalie asked no more of me than mowing the lawn. Once they saw how well and efficiently, I did the job the work that had been shelved was now being demanded of me. As with any older structure, lots of repairs were necessary: door hinges squeaking, a windowpane needing to be replaced, a loose stair tread needed nailing down, the kitchen sink dripping, light bulbs needing replacement, and so forth. I loved being there and loved the confidence these people showed in me.

My father was pleased that my father considered my new employment as “important work” for a young boy. My comfort level with fixing and repairing resulted from watching him as a do-it-yourselfer. “If you need help or advice Son, “just ask,” he told me. Then in a confidential tone, he said, “But whatever you do Toby, stay out of the nun’s rooms.” When I asked why he said, “It’s just a good policy.” Raising his eyebrows he continued, “That’s one of the few places where a young man can get himself into trouble.”

There were underlying feelings in the community that some unspeakable thing had gone on at St. Bart’s. The local parishioners were tightlipped about anything that might have happened, but it didn’t take me long to get the sense there had been some unspoken undercurrents about the previous Head Priest, Father McNamara. A few of my friends were Catholic and belonged to St. Bart’s. Because there were so many girls going to CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) they convinced me to attend CYO with them—this was before I was hired. When I went, I noticed how blatantly Father Mac was ogling the girl’s butts. But that was not a big deal to my friends and me. We were all doing our share of ogling.