Chapter 1

My mother and father had mostly resolved their differences. Dad would stay out late Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. Mom would be gone from Monday afternoon until early Tuesday. I saw less of my parents, but things were much calmer at home. Several years later, I wasn’t surprised a bit when I found out Dad spent three nights a week with his girlfriend, but Mom’s activities utterly shocked me. Mom thought she was doing the righteous, religious thing. She desperately wanted a man’s attention but couldn’t have sex with another man and cheat on her husband. She started dancing at a strip club on Monday amateur nights. She got a little money and lots of attention from a few dozen men. She somehow thought letting them watch her dance naked was ok, since she wasn’t screwing them and cheating on Dad. When I heard that, I rolled my eyes and shook my head at her bizarre logic.

At our new house I had a nice big bedroom with a desk and computer, but I missed my friends. I missed my first girlfriend Naiomi desperately and pined for her every night. We’d been totally platonic, but I’d expected to marry her someday.

After a couple of unhappy years, I met two brothers that moved in a few blocks from our house. Bobby was 14 and Wayne and I were 13. They had a sister two years younger than me, Louanne. She followed the three of us everywhere, like a lost puppy. They had very strong accents and I had trouble understanding them sometimes, but the brothers and I became good friends over the summer. Louanne was just sort of there, like furniture.

They told me they had needed to move to town because the Yankees burned down their farm in Vietnam. I assumed Vietnam was a town at least a few hours away, and decided I hated Yankees. Near the end of the summer, my family heard my father’s cousin had been wounded in Vietnam by the Gooks, and I decided I hated Gooks too. I discovered the excessive irony only a few days later as I watched a TV interview with a soldier, and discovered what ‘Gook’ and ‘Yankee’ meant.

When school started I learned my new friends’ real names; Bah He Yang, Wai Yun Yang, and Liu An Yang. The Yang brothers and I did everything together. We walked to school and back, we played baseball and tennis, we swam at the pool, and we wondered about the great mysteries of girls. Their little sister Liu An wondered about girls with us too. She wasn’t a real girl yet, just a kid.

One Saturday morning a year later, Mom and Dad were away. I heard my sister Kim yell from the bathroom, “Kevin! I need some help!” The bathroom door wasn’t locked, so I walked in. I saw something I will never forget, no matter how much I try. My sister was nude, looking in the bathroom closet for something. I saw my big sister naked! A little bit sexy, and a whole lot wrong and disgusting!

Far worse yet, I saw she had something hanging down between her legs! It was white and shaped like a cigar, with a white string on it. She frantically dug through the closet, as I stared and began to get seriously ill. She turned around and screamed. “REEEEE!” I was two feet away and staring at her crotch.

She grabbed a towel and covered herself. “Kevin, I need you to help me.”

I got very queasy and nervous. I wasn’t going to help with BLOOD, or anything DOWN THERE!

“There are no pads in the bathroom, and mom’s tampons are too big, they won’t go in me far enough.”

The room began to spin. I struggled to stay calm and standing.

“I need you to go to the bottom drawer of mom’s dresser. I know she keeps some pads in there. Please?”

I walked to Mom and dad’s room and looked in mom’s bottom drawer. I saw a small box that said “pads” on it and carried it to Kim.

She peeled some tape or something off one and thanked me, as she pulled the tampon from between her legs. There was blood on it! Some blood dripped from the slit at the bottom of her belly, too! I voided my stomach into the bathroom sink and ran outside.

After lunch, Kim gave me a frozen candy bar! I loved them, and almost never got them! She gave me a one-arm hug and said, “Thanks for saving me. I appreciate it.” She kissed me on the forehead. “But if you ever tell anybody, I’ll slap you into next month.”

It was something different and exciting. Of course, I told all my friends. When I told Liu An, she said, “It’s something very important to girls. That was a good thing you did.” I decided I liked Liu and held her hand. She blushed a little and smiled. We held hands as we walked to the park to meet her brothers for baseball. I walked home with them, holding her hand again. When we got to their house, their mother screamed something in Vietnamese. She was clearly very angry. Wai Yun told me to wait for him on the front steps.

After several minutes and a lot of yelling, he came back and explained. I had dishonored their sister by holding her hand without getting their father’s permission to date her. They couldn’t be my friends anymore, and I shouldn’t go near their sister or their house.

I was sad I lost most of friends, and very, very bored. As a last resort, I tried hanging out with my sister and her friends. They partly tolerated me, as long as I brought them snacks and drinks and did small chores for them. I thought her friend Becky was kind of nice. She was sort of pretty, and she wasn’t mean to me much. Her other friend Alice was very pretty and very mean. She called me names and teased me nearly every day.

But Alice had BOOBS!!! BIG BOOBS!!! Half the size of mom’s! For a seventeen-year-old girl, they were HUGE!

The three girls would sit in the kitchen for hours and hours, jabbering away about makeup, clothes, and boys. After a month of them treating me like a servant, I decided I liked books and tv better than the three of them. They started to drink coffee, because they wanted to be more mature. It was obvious they didn’t actually like it. They each put in three or four scoops of sugar and creamer, but still grimaced when they drank it.

One afternoon it was just Kim and I at home. She said her friends were annoyed that I stared at them a lot. “Other than me, you’ve never seen a naked girl before, and you want to know about how sex works? I’ll give you some education, so you can quit being a creep around my friends.” I wondered if she was going to do something with me? Get naked and teach me sex, or something? I wasn’t sure if I liked that idea or not. Mostly, I didn’t. She brought a cardboard box in the living room and set it on the coffee table. “I found this in Mom and dad’s closet. Have a look.”

She had found the best possible way to keep me from messing up the house or getting in trouble. There were about twenty magazines. Half of them had naked women! The others showed men and women having sex! I looked at some and started rubbing my crotch through my pants.

She yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Why do boys always have to be dirty hornballs? No touching yourself where people can see! Look all you want, then do what you need to in the BATHROOM! I’m going to get a few things at the grocery store. Don’t make a mess while I’m gone. AND NO TOUCHING YOURSELF OUT HERE!”

The second she left, I took three of the magazines to my room and hid them under my mattress. At the time I thought I was clever, but now I know that at least half of teenage boys did exactly the same thing. At least, up until internet porn became common. I went back to the coffee table and looked and looked, until my arousal started to get out of control. I ran to the bathroom and slammed the door. I dropped my pants and underwear and started jerking off. And kept jerking off. And then stroked my cock some more.

I wasn’t quite old enough to ejaculate or have an orgasm. It was wonderful, but terribly frustrating at the same time. I felt very good and I anticipated feeling even better. I just couldn’t quite get there. Imagine eating one potato chip a minute while staring at the bag and not being able to reach it. It felt very good at the beginning but gradually got more and more painful. I rubbed myself until the skin on the sides of my penis was raw and nearly gone. It started to bleed a little.

I got a shower and walked out to see Kim staring at the bathroom door. I waddled from side to side, attempting to protect my poor abused penis from further pain. Kim knew what was going on and asked, “So are you going to look some more, and go rub your little peanut ‘til you can’t walk?” She laughed.

I turned beet red and hung my head in shame. “You can put the box away. Thanks.”

A week later Kim’s annoying friends were over again, sitting in the kitchen. They drank coffee and talked about how to get boys. Alice said, “I heard some boys like girls that smoke.” She took a cigarette from one of mom’s packs on the counter and waved it around. “So, am I sexy now?” With her big boobs, she was, but not because of the cigarette.

Kim stuck one in her mouth. “Not as sexy as me!”

Becky said, “That won’t work. My Mom smokes all the time and has terrible luck with men.” She took a cigarette, put it in her mouth, then lit it! I watched her suck on the cig, then choke and gag. It sounded like she was trying to cough out a goat. After five or six puffs and coughing fits, she could inhale and exhale smoothly.

I thought it actually was kind of sexy. When she sucked on the cigarette, her mouth made me imagine she was sucking my penis instead.

Becky finished her comment, “See, I smoked a whole cigarette. Are there any men around here?”

Alice pointed to me, “Nope, just a baby.”

All three of them laughed at me, and I ran to my room.

The three of them started smoking every day. They would take the coffee they didn’t like to the garage and smoke cigarettes they hated, to prove they were mature.

Two months after the reluctant period rescue, I saw Kim laying on her bed crying. I asked what was wrong, but she threw a shoe at me and yelled, “SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!” She covered her face with her arm.

The story of me helping with her tampon problem had gotten out. Wai Yun had told a friend, who told somebody, and so on, until a girl who didn’t like Kim found out. I heard that kids started calling her “Period pop”, “Bloodsicle”, and other things to tease her. I felt very guilty. High school kids can be surprisingly mean.

After a few days, she forgave me and offered me a deal. “You want to see a real girl’s boobs, and feel them?”

I tried to play it cool. “More than anything!” I failed.

“Linda and Becky have never seen a boy naked. If you’ll let them see you, you can see their boobs and feel them.”

I tried to play it cool again. “Deal! Yes! Yes!” I failed worse.

She called her friends and told them the deal was on for Saturday morning. The four of us had coffee in the kitchen. I hated it too, but forced myself to drink a few sips, to show how grown up I was. Kim led the parade to the garage for cigarettes. The three girls lit up, and I took out a cigarette and smelled it. I reached for a lighter, but Alice said; “I got you a special present. Men like cigars, so have one like a MAN.”