Free (Not That You Asked) by Steve Almond Page A

they come booming out of him, as if my mother were standing across a busy street instead of where she is actually standing —right next to him.
    Becoming pubescent is all I have thought about for the last year. During this time, Dave has developed a set of shoulders worthy of Greek sculpture, while Mike, my upstart twin, has acquired facial hair and undeniable B.O. His body reeks of manhood. I, meanwhile, have remained stranded in some kind of post-latency limbo. Every evening before falling asleep, I pull down my pajama bottoms to check signs. I am so familiar with the hairs on the underside of my scrotum that I have considered naming them.
    My mother is still talking to Dr. Davis, whom I now decide I will poison. I will poison him so badly that his tongue will fall out and it will be blue. Mike and Dave are sitting next to me, but neither one looks over. No smirks. No giggles. No innocent questions such as “Have you tried asking the tooth fairy for a real penis?” The brutality of the disclosure has preempted even their capacities for cruelty.
    It will dawn on me only in the parking lot, as Mike and Dave launch into an earnest discussion of Estes Rocket technology, that the revelation of my pre-pubescence—which I have shouldered these many months, and which I have deluded myself into regarding as a private burden—is, in fact, so obvious, so taken for granted, that it no longer registers as a possible source of mockery.
     
    Handjob
    I am at Camp Tawonga. Tawonga is where Jewish kids from the Bay Area come to learn about creating community and respecting nature’s harmony and getting handjobs. It is located somewhere near Yosemite. The word tawonga is derived from the Miwok Indians. In Miwok, it means “handjob.”
    I have been going to Tawonga since I was six. I am now fourteen. Girls at Tawonga look upon me favorably because I have a cool older brother and I once fell down a waterfall and because the standards of masculine pulchritude at Tawonga are frighteningly low. The guys in my cabin are a mess of acne and orthodontia.
    At camp, I always find a girlfriend. This year, her name is Natalie. We slow danced at the costume party, though I had poison ivy all over my body and was therefore encased in a green polyester sweatsuit. She was dressed as a Playboy bunny. From a distance, we looked like a tree feeling up an underaged porn star.
    Natalie has the nicest tits I have ever seen. They are big and brown and fluted at the nipple. I have spent hours rubbing and licking them. Sometimes, if we are in a private place, such as the dugout of the auxiliary softball field, I will lift her Lacoste shirt and gaze at them, so as to be overwhelmed by their perfect tittiness.
    Natalie is a year younger than I am, but she lives in San Francisco. She is a city girl, and this means—if I have done my math right—she will touch my dick. She has already felt my dick with other parts of her body, such as mainly her belly and tush, because, unless specifically directed not to, I am grinding against her at all times. With my body I am saying to her: You feel that? You feel that, baby? That’s what we call in these parts a D-I-C-K! The night before the session ends, our cabins go on an overnight together. We have been waiting two weeks for this chance. The campfire burns down. Natalie and I sneak off to a secluded patch of sand beside the Tuolumne River, where we dry hump ineptly for three and a half hours.
    “This is our last night,” she says, dramatically.
    “It should be special,” I say, dramatically.
    “I know,” she says, dramatically.
    I pull down my underwear dramatically.
    Natalie knows this is coming. She slips her hand under the sleeping bag and takes hold and begins, well, yanking is probably the best word.
    I want to give her some direction, but I’m not in a very good position to do so because I am terrified that if I say anything she will stop, and because I myself don’t really know how to jerk off, because my