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

primary form of onanism has to date involved the use of the hot tub as sexual aid.
    Natalie continues to yank, as if I were a particularly stubborn weed.
    “How does that feel?” she whispers.
    “Good,” I say. “Really…good.”
    But her fingernails are scratching me, the tender skin is rending. Natalie is looking into my eyes and I am trying not to wince and playing with her epic boobs and wondering what happens if her nail actually slices through the thin skin that encases what I will later learn (in health class) to call the spongy tissue. I close my eyes and see a sausage slipping from its casing.
    “Can you make it slippery?” I say.
    Natalie dabs her tongue on the curve of skin between her thumb and index finger. My handjob now exudes the faint scent of Watermelon Bubble Yum, and things move much faster. Within a minute, I start to feel the unmistakable tremors. But the more excited I get, the more I squirm, and the more I squirm, the further in her nails dig, until, on the very threshold of release, I blurt out, “I better take over now!” and tear myself away from her just in time to inseminate the sand.
    The next day, we hold hands on the bus the whole way and talk about how this isn’t just a summer thing. It is something much deeper. We are soulmates. We have licked one another’s souls. We are soulmate lickers.
    Natalie is getting off in San Francisco, so we have our final farewell. All around us, other campers are singing about West Virginia, mountain mama, and Natalie is sitting on my lap, whispering, “I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you so much,” and I want to thank her—for her shy foolish notes, for her feet, which are grubby and beautiful in yellow flip-flops, for the hickeys that ring her neck like plum skins, for the night in the arts and crafts shed when the lights blacked out and she fell against me without a thought.
    But I am thirteen, so I say only, “That was the best handjob ever. ”
     
    Speedo
    Back home, I am just another freshman. I wear knockoff polo shirts and Jacomo cologne from free sample bottles I forage at the mall. I try out for the soccer team, but get cut after I kick the ball directly at Scott Sutcher’s head during a drill. “It was a mistake,” I tell the coach. “My foot slipped.” My brother Mike goes out for and makes the swim team. This makes no sense. I am the designated jock of the family.
    I have no intention of ever attending one of Mike’s swim meets. We do not attend each other’s extracurriculars, as this would violate the unspoken Code of Fraternal Disregard. But I need a ride to my job scooping ice cream, and my dad says picking up Mike is part of the deal. We arrive just as the meet is ending. My brother climbs from the pool and huddles with his teammates.
    Seeing his body is something of a shock. The uncoordinated pudge of our youth has grown into a swan: long, muscular, absurdly handsome. And then he is walking toward me and my shock redoubles. His Speedo. My God—there is something of great masculine significance in there, barely contained.
    This should not come as a surprise. He is my twin brother. But strange as this may sound, I have never seen him or Dave naked. We are too fragile for such acts of self-exposure, though it now occurs to me, as Mike pulls a towel modestly around his waist, that perhaps he has been trying to spare me.
    A few weeks later, I sneak into his room and try on one of his Speedos. I am thinking that maybe, just maybe, it is the suit that makes the man. I gaze at myself in the mirror and it takes me a few seconds to even find my dick.
     
    Horse
    Sophomore year, I develop a fierce crush on a girl named Suzie. But she takes up with a kid who is reputed to have a schlong on the equine scale. He is on the swim team with Mike. Apparently, the central qualification for this team is a really big cock.
    Everywhere I turn, I encounter really big cocks. The focus on them is relentless, almost religious in nature. One of the