Ancient myths and legends. They are full of hidden desires and fears. Sigmund Freud knew this, and often used tales of yore to explain his theories. You may not share his ideas, but I think you will agree that there is always some ancient story that reflects your desires and fears, both conscious and unconscious. There are myths that help us understand ourselves better, myths that allow us to look into the depth of our psyche.

Everyone may call a certain myth their own story. I am no exception. Diana and Actaeon, the story of the hunter who became the hunted, may definitely be called my case.

I was six years old when, lying on the floor in my friend Michael’s room, we leafed through one of his father’s numerous art albums. Soon our attention was caught by this picture by Lucas Cranach, called “Diana and Actaeon”.

“What’s happening to him?” I pointed my finger at the creature, half man, half deer, being attacked by hunting dogs and watched by a group of naked girls standing nearby in a pool.

“His name’s Actaeon,” said Michael. “Never heard his story?”

“No,” I shook my head.

“He was a young hunter who one day had the misfortune to stumble upon the pool, where Diana, the goddess of the hunt, was bathing with her nymphs. She decided to punish him for seeing them naked, so she turned him into a deer. His own dogs took him for prey and tore him apart.”

“Poor guy,” I sighed. “Such a horrible ending only because he saw naked girls.”

“Have you seen naked girls?” asked Michael.

“Sure,” I replied. “I see them every Sunday. And you, Mike, ever seen a naked girl?”

“Never,” Michael pronounced thoughtfully. “I think it’s nice to see naked girls once a week, but I hope you’ll never meet Diana the goddess among them. Otherwise, you might turn into a deer.”

“I don’t wanna be a deer,” I smiled.

Indeed, in those days I did have the opportunity to see naked girls and women every Sunday. I grew up in a small town whose residents used to go to the bathhouse on weekends. Saturday was men’s day and Sunday was reserved for women. In my early childhood, my mother would take me to the baths with her and my younger sister Lena. My story began one Sunday, shortly after that conversation with Misha, when, as I said, I was six years old, closer to seven, and my sister had just turned five. As usual, in the morning, Mom, Lena and I went to the bathhouse.

On the way there, which was through an aspen grove, I felt like taking a pee and told Mom about it.

“Go to that big tree over there,” she told me.

After emptying my bladder, I caught up with Mom and sister, who kept on walking down the path. Soon I heard my sister ask:

“Mom, why does Pete pee standing up instead of sitting down like I do?”

“He’s a boy, and has a weenie like all boys do. It’s just that with a weenie it’s convenient to pee standing up.”

“When I grow up, Mom, will I have a weenie too?”

“No, dear, you won’t,” Mom replied and took Lena’s hand, “when you grow up, you’ll have a pair of nice breasts, but never a weenie. Girls don’t have weenies.”

“It’s a pity,” Lena sighed wistfully.

When we arrived at the bathhouse, my sister and I quickly undressed and, as always, began to run and frolic along the benches and shower stalls. That day I suddenly realized that I had something that no girl had, something that girls could envy. Now, in the bathhouse, they all could see I had that thing. It wasn’t so bad at all to know that you had something no one else around you had. Because they were all girls. No way they could pee on a tree trunk standing up. Overwhelmed with pride, I decided to tease my sister.

“Lena,” I turned to her with a smirk on my face, “I know you wanna have a weenie, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” she replied.

“You do,” I stated confidently, “I heard what you said to Mom. But you’ll never have one. You have to be a boy to have a weenie. But you’re a girl. I’m glad I’m not a girl with that silly sort of pee-pee you have. That girlish pee-pee of yours, with nothing to show off!”

Lena seemed to be offended by my words.

“Silly you are, Pete, and silly your little sausage!”

“You’re just jealous of my sausage! You girls don’t have this thing,” I pointed at my penis. “It’s going to grow up with me, and when I’m a big man, I’ll have a big, huge weenie, big like...”

My gaze fell on a plastic shampoo bottle lying on the wooden bench next to me. I grabbed it and pressed it against my pubic bone, mimicking a penis.

“Big like this,” I exclaimed. “I’m gonna have a weenie big and strong like this one. Men have big weenies and that’s what makes them so strong.”

“Then I’ll rip it off you,” Lena said angrily, and snatched the shampoo bottle from me with a quick swipe of her hand.

“Give it back to me!” I snapped angrily.

“Never!” she cried out and skittered away from me. I darted after her and we started a chase among and between the naked girls and women, along and round the wooden benches and shower stalls. As soon as I caught up with Lena, I grasped the bottle, trying to snatch it from her, but she didn’t yield, holding the bottle with both hands. A tug-of-war ensued with no winning side.

“Give my weenie back to me!” I shouted.

In response, my sister only laughed and began kicking her legs, trying to fight me off. I tugged harder, but somehow slipped awkwardly on the wet tile floor and flopped down onto knees. At that moment my sister’s foot, absolutely unexpectedly, flew right into my groin.

I’d never been hit down there before. I’d hurt my knees, elbows, stomach, my buttocks, my shoulders before but never that little sac that hung beneath my little penis. Nor ever before had I known any pain that could be compared with that murderous shock that I felt the very instant my sister’s little foot crashed into my scrotum, that little pouch of skin that every boy has in addition to his weenie. Never had I had any idea that the two tiny orbs hanging in that sac were so sensitive. So sensitive that a little girl could so easily make them explode with shocking pain. Sharp, searing, unbearable pain.

“Aaaaah!” I cried out. The plastic bottle dropped from my hands to let me grab my injured balls. The pain wouldn’t let me stay upright, even on my knees, so I collapsed onto my side. Lying on the wet floor and clutching my testicles with both hands, I tried to soothe the pain in them, but all in vain. Instead the pain spread across my stomach.

“My baaaaalls,” I moaned. I knew those horribly aching things in my trembling hands were called balls, but never before had I said that word aloud. Never had I paid much attention to my testicles, and now I was too well aware of my possessing them. A mere kick from a small girl granted them such great pain as to render me absolutely helpless. One of my first thoughts was to retaliate, to make my sister feel the same shock, to hit her in the same place, to make her grab her own balls and collapse helplessly to the floor, to make her writhe in pain like I did. But soon my gaze, drawn to my sister’s naked body, immediately sent an important signal to my brain - “she has no balls”. Another second and I remembered that I was the only one with a pair of balls in the whole bathhouse. The only one with a weenie and balls. Only a few minutes ago I might have called Lena a loser because she didn’t have a weenie and balls. But now it was me who was the real loser. Lena was a girl, and she was the winner. What the hell do I need that bottle of shampoo for? To prove to her that my weenie is better than her pee-pee?

A few little girls gathered around me and watched me with keen interest. One or two started giggling, but most of them had no idea what had happened to me, why I was lying on the floor with my hands between my legs, letting out moans now and then, but there were their mothers and older sisters who explained to them the cause of my suffering. His pee-pee. Boys have a different pee-pee. It always hurts them a lot when they get hit in that pee-pee of theirs. Just because their pee-pee has balls, and those balls were so vulnerable. I wanted to sink underground, but not to hear them talking about the weakness of boys’ balls.

“A silly pee-pee he has,” one of the girls pronounced.

I raised my painful eyes to look at that girl. She was the same age as my sister, who was standing next to her.

“He said we girls have silly pee-pees,” Lena said to her.

“He’s wrong,” replied the girl, turned around and walked away.

The other girls seemed to lose interest in me too, and began to leave the scene of my tragedy as well.

I looked at Lena, who stayed beside me. She was giggling merrily, and seemed proud to show me her smooth groin. Yes, she had that “girlish pee-pee” of hers. Not silly at all, but nice and cute. It was probably the moment I felt the biggest envy of my life. I was madly jealous of my sister. I felt a desire to have a pee-pee like hers. With these thoughts in my head, I was dying not so much from the pain in my balls, but from the wild desire to have a girl’s pee-pee.

Damn, why didn’t I have the same thing Lena had between her legs? Damn, why didn’t my own groin look the same? Why didn’t I have what all girls had - that nice, neat slit between the legs? Why were those balls between my legs? Those silly balls that my sister turned into a mass of unbearable pain with one swipe of her foot.

At the time of this incident, Mom was in the steam room, and apparently someone told her that her son had gotten kicked in the balls, and was lying on the floor in the shower room. When she heard it, she rushed over to me.

Soon Mom was near me. I ripped one hand off my balls, and held it out to her. She grabbed it, and pulled me up so I could get to my feet. Then I put my left arm around my mom’s leg to keep myself from sinking to the floor again, still holding my aching balls with my right hand.

“What happened, Peter?” Mom asked.

“Lena kicked me in the balls,” I said. “They hurt so much.”

“It’s his own fault,” Lena said. “He said I had a silly pee-pee without a weenie. I wasn’t aiming my foot at his pee-pee. It was an accident.”

“You kicked him in the balls, Lena,” explained Mom. “That always hurts boys. I mean, when they get hit in the balls. It’s their weakest point.”

“I didn’t know that, Mom,” said my sister.

“Now you will. And you, Pete, you shouldn’t let anyone hit you in the balls. Do they still hurt, your little ballsies?”

I nodded my head.

“Then let me take you under a cold shower,” Mom said. “Maybe you’ll feel better there.”

We walked to the nearest shower stall where Mom put me under a stream of cold water.

“How are balls now?” Mom asked in a short while, turning the shower off. “I don’t want to get you too cold.”

“I’m a little better,” I said. “But my balls still hurt.”

Suddenly Lena appeared in front of the shower stall and looked at me with a smile.

“How’s your weenie? Still hurts?” she asked.

“It’s not my weenie that hurts, it’s my balls,” I answered. Silly girl, it was all the same to her, weenie or balls. She managed to kick her brother in the balls so bad, and had no idea what exactly was hurting him down there. Or how badly it hurt. She had no idea. But could I call her silly for that?

Then a woman came up to us and started talking to Mom:

“I saw what happened. They were fighting over my shampoo bottle. I know what he needs to do now. Last week my husband got hit in the nuts with a tennis ball. He couldn’t stand on his feet for a few minutes, but then he tried jumping on his heels, then did some squats. He said it helped him. Your boy may try this method too.”

I did a couple of squats which brought no relief to my balls.

I looked at all three of them - Mom, Lena, and the woman with the shampoo bottle. I looked at their naked bodies. I looked at their pussies. What could they possibly know about my pain? All that silly advice of theirs about cold showers, squats and jumping on heels, how did they know it would help? They had no balls. They didn’t know anything about being hit in the balls, much less did they know how to get rid of this sort of pain.

But were they silly because of this ignorance? If so, I wanted to be as silly as they were. To never know this pain, but to talk like them about how their husband, or brother, or whoever, got hit in the balls, how badly he suffered at first, then how he jumped on his heels or whatever it was he did to get rid of this horrible male pain. Yes, I wanted to be as silly and ignorant in the matter of balls as they were.

Then Lena said:

“Mommy, I want to pee.”

“Go to the shower stall next door and pee right there. Then turn on the shower to wash it off.”

Lena immediately disappeared behind the wall of the next stall, then the woman with the shampoo removed herself from the spot.

“I will pee, too,” I said, then squatted down and started peeing on the wet floor.

“What are you doing?” exclaimed Mom.

“I’m peeing.”

“But why are you doing it like a girl?”

“I’m doing it like Lena.”

“But Lena is a girl. And you’re a boy.”

“So what?”

Mom was about to say something, but suddenly the lights went out, and the whole bathhouse was plunged into darkness. Apparently, there had been a power failure. One or two of the little girls screamed.

Then I saw her. Despite the darkness around me, I could see her clearly. She was not my mother, but the goddess Diana, though she looked like her. Naked and beautiful. I stood up and looked at her with rapture mixed with fear. I remembered that picture in the art album at Misha’s. The same Misha who had never seen naked girls and women. He was in no danger of being turned into a deer and torn to pieces by hunting dogs, unlike me, who had so often been among naked girls, and now it was finally time for my punishment. First my sister kicked me in the balls with all her might, then other girls mocked me, and now Diana herself would turn me into a deer. But for what? Just for having balls and a weenie? It seemed so unfair.

Diana would never turn my sister into a deer, or my mom, or that woman with the shampoo bottle, or that girl who said I had a silly pee-pee. But I wasn’t like them, though I wished that difference between me and them would somehow disappear.

“Please, don’t turn me into a deer,” I said.

“Why not?” Diana asked.

“Did Actaeon ever pee like a girl?”

“He never did,” Diana shook her head, then smiled.

“But I did. I did it just now. I did it like Lena. Because I’m a...”

Just then the lights came back on, and Diana vanished.

“What were you just mumbling about, Pete?” asked Mom.

“She didn’t turn me into a deer,” I said quietly.

“Who? Why should you be turned into a deer?”

Then Lena reappeared, now with the same bottle of shampoo, which she held to her groin. She started parodying me, wrinkling her face as if in pain and wailing:

“Oh my poor weenie! She kicked my weenie! It hurts so bad!

“Lena, I already told you, you didn’t kick my weenie, you kicked me in the balls.”

Silly girl. But I wouldn’t tell her that. After I saw Diana, I didn’t hold a grudge against my sister for kicking me in the balls. On the contrary, I was ashamed of myself for teasing her in the first place.

Just then that woman showed up again.

“Dear girl. You took my shampoo again. Just don’t fight with your brother over it again. By the way, dear boy, did you jump on your heels?

“No,” I answered. “But I peed like a girl.”

“What?” The woman asked in surprise.

I felt I had nothing more to say, so I wandered off to the locker room, still holding my balls in my hand. Diana hadn’t turned me into a deer, but I still felt like an outsider among the bathing nymphs.

Jump on your heels! Did she have any idea how much it hurt to get kicked in the balls? I turned around to see the woman saying something to my sister. I thought she was talking about how it was good to be a girl. Maybe I was just imagining it. In any case, she certainly wasn’t advising her to jump on her heels...

The next week, on Saturday, I went to the bathhouse with my dad. Every Russian bathhouse has a steam room where people whip themselves with bunches of dried leafy twigs, called bath brooms. The high temperature and humidity of the steam, combined with twig whipping, have a very good effect on the body. My father, being a big fan of this kind of massage, started every visit to the bathhouse by going straight to the steam room.