No-Weenie Woman

 (originally written July 14, 2012)

I remember going down to Sav-Time Market (on 15th & Prater Way in Sparks, Nevada where I grew up) with my mom once. I think I was probably 10 at the time, making Cliff 9. We were standing at the magazine display, looking at comic books. Batman, Superman, any kind of superhero, or Star Wars, which was the leader of our desire for toys back then. 1979, folks. Great times for a 10 year old. As we stood there looking, something caught our eye, and one of us picked it up. I think Cliff did. So he opens the magazine and we see a naked woman on the page. Her tits, or boobies as we called them back then, were big and in our minds, hilarious. The looked all swollen. Puberty hadn’t hit yet, but this experience probably started the cycle. As I was saying, we were standing there, pointing and laughing at this naked woman’s boobies. Then we noticed that she didn’t have a weenie. Yeah, that’s what we called them. My son does too. He’s 6 and because of me, he calls his penis his weenie. I hate typing penis. I’m not homophobic at all and I’m not afraid to look at a man’s penis. I don’t necessarily want to see one, but sometimes you do in a movie or real life when you and your friends are doing something stupid. Not “experimenting” or anything, just exposing your penis randomly for laughs or something. But I hate typing the word 'penis'. So Cliff and I are laughing at this swollen-chested, no-penis woman in the store. Suddenly we hear the male cashier say, “Hey, you can’t look at that!” He wasn’t mean or anything, he was just protecting our young minds I suppose. We closed the magazine and put it down, still giggling. We were coralled by my mom and we went back to my house. It’s funny to me that I used to think of my parent’s house (they paid for it, I didn’t) as ‘my house’. It's odd to me now that back then the adult magazines were easy access to young boys. Right there next to the comics. Now they're way up on the top, often behind wood or something, preventing young, pubescent males from learning about the body.

Puberty hit me when I was 11. When I was 12, I had ALOT of adult magazines. Let me explain. There was a yard sale just around the corner from my house, and my cousin Cliff and I went over there. There were comics and cool magazines about guns, and in a cardboard box, some adult magazines. Obviously we couldn't look at the adult mags, but we were aware of their presence. It's a guy thing, I guess. We bought a couple items and went home. We had an afternoon of typical boy stuff, i.e. playing dudes, hot wheels, etc. But then Cliff took a walk down the street and when he came back he said, "Those Playboys are in the trash over in the alley." Naturally, being growing boys, we went for the magazines, retrieving a box of naked gold.

We took them into my room and decided the best way to split them up was to simply stack them in a pile. Then Cliff would take the mag at the top, and I would take the next. Then Cliff, then me. So eventually we both had an equal stack of Playboy magazines. It was awesome. We arranged for Cliff to leave his stack hidden in my room, since he obviously couldn't carry them home. His mother would freak. But then, so would mine, which is why it remained our secret stash. My room was usually our hangout anyways, so that's where we kept the mags. It was glorious. Two young boys in the midst of puberty with scores of girly mags. America fucking rules!