Free (Not That You Asked) by Steve Almond

me as an apt reflection of Fox’s unique brand of thrift-store fascism. I couldn’t bring myself to scan any of the other obits. I knew what they said, all the praise mustered for such occasions.
    Vonnegut would have been revolted. As a younger man, he had lusted after acclaim. He thought people were actually listening to him, a respectable Christian mistake. Vonnegut was an athiest, of course. No sweet dreams of heaven for him. No jokes tossed down to the suckers in purgatory. He leaves us his books, his pleas for kindness, his foolish hope for our salvation.

 

 
     
    SHAME ON ME
     
    WHY MY ADOLESCENCE SUCKED DONKEY COCK
     
    Hot Tub
    I am twelve. My parents, in authentic Northern California style, have installed a hot tub in the backyard, a sweet redwood job with a deck. I am vaguely aware of my cock at this age, nothing specific. I can’t imagine a girl touching it. I can’t imagine what it might do if touched. I haven’t yet acquired that glorious pathetic byproduct of male socialization: cock consciousness, which is to say cock vanity, cock insecurity, cock issues.
    One evening I jump into the tub wearing only thin nylon soccer shorts. It’s just past dusk. The purple clouds are seeping off into black. My parents and brothers are gone for the night and I am feeling—I guess the proper word is naughty. I pull off my shorts and fling them onto the deck and stand before one of the jets and suddenly there’s this, this…twinge. I sit down immediately. I try to keep still. My immediate suspicion is that I’ve done something very wrong. Then, somehow, I am facing the jet again.
    I am facing the jet and I am rock hard and holding myself firmly around the base. I let the water pound that one right spot, which is—though I don’t know this yet—where the nerves bundle below the tip. I push so close I’m blocking the jet, and nearly stumble with the feeling. The sensation inside my body is percussive, ecstatic, approaching violence. I reel backward and slam against the side of the tub. Within a minute, I have assumed the position again. It takes longer this time and it stings and I could care less. By my fourth go-round, I am in considerable pain and sporting what looks like a cock hickey.
    This goes on for months. One evening, I am almost caught by a friend of my mother’s, who bursts outside to find me straddling a jet, my eyes shut, shorts clenched deliriously in my fist.
    “ Oh, ” she says.
    “I’m really sore from soccer,” I yell quickly. “I pulled a muscle.”
    My brothers, like other normal boys, have already discovered the ardent tugging of terrestrial masturbation. Low-grade porn. Jergens. Kleenex. But it doesn’t happen for me until the following year.
    I am shocked, horrified, to discover the physical consequences of my habit, that something actually comes out when you come, and that (by rather unfortunate extension) I have been defiling the family hot tub for months. I am disgusted with myself and incapable of stopping. In the loneliness of youth, in the bruising doubts of boyhood, these moments become precious. With the fragrance of damp redwood thick around me and the jets blasting, I am precisely what I want to be: a brief ribbon of joy in black water.
     
    Exam
    I am sitting in the waiting room of our pediatrician, Joe Davis, with my brothers and our mother. Mike and I are thirteen. Dave is fifteen. We are all feeling vaguely embarrassed, not just by the ritual of our annual checkup (“Turn your head…now please cough…”) but by having to sit on bright red chairs intended for five-year-olds.
    Dr. Davis appears in the doorway and calls my mother over. Because she is also a doctor, he takes a certain professional pride in speaking with her personally. He glances down at his clipboard and announces the following results:
    “Almond, David: pubescent male.”
    “Almond, Michael: pubescent male.”
    “Almond, Steven: pre pubescent male.”
    Dr. Davis does not whisper these words. No,