[Edited for content 6/19/2012 by Sam]
You KNOW what this one's going to be about...

Masturbation.

I don't know why this is such a taboo topic, and honestly if boys were encouraged to do it without shame the United States would have a lower teen pregnancy rate. My father being humiliated for masturbating is a big part of how I came to be. You'll learn about that later.

A few days after my...um...revealing experience, I was at school having lunch with my friend Brandi's brother Josh, a seventh grader that I knew from my church group (having a older guy want to eat with you was a big deal!) and I got a good look up his shirt sleeve and saw his sparse armpit hair...and then IT happened...

I got instantly hard.

Or "rocket engaged" as my best friend Austin calls it .

I didn't know what to do about it either. My heart was pounding like the drums from a Slayer song, and I kept trying to get more peeks at his pits.

I didn't know why this was happening to me but I had no control over it.

In my mind I was looking at Josh's pits in slow mo, unable to clear that thought no matter how hard I tried. My hands did something I knew was forbidden. I don't have to tell you what happened, do I?

Grandma walked in my room and just stared at me with a dropped jaw...I covered myself up and started crying like a baby, and she just walked out. I dressed and tried to sneak out of the house but she stopped me, making me sit down on the couch with her.

I was so embarrassed, so ashamed, but she put her arm around me and told me what I did was normal, that most boys do it and that it's totally okay. She apologized for walking in on me, and told me that I was turning into a MAN right before her eyes. She always makes me feel better about myself when things like that happen.

I think most parents would have handled that in a far different way, and I'm so lucky! A few of my friends have been caught and humiliated about the whole thing (yeah my friends talk about this stuff). Austin's experience with it will be part of a future journal, but I'm not there yet.

The next day Grandma gave me a DO NOT DISTURB sign showing a boy studying (LOL) that I could hang on my door when I needed some privacy. She also gave me a sex ed book for me to read, and the pictures of guys stuff gave me...umm...inspiration.

I was turning into one of them.

A fag. A queer. A pervert. A cock smoker. A butt pirate.

All names I heard in school.

Damn.

Soon, my father's childhood bedroom would be mine, and I would accidentally find some artifacts of his past that would give me a connection I never expected.

Sam