I learned to steal pornography in the seventh grade from Pete Brown. Pete was a troublemaker, even his mother said so. I was a good boy, the standard by which Mrs. Brown often put Pete down. She didn't know we had been having sex from the time we were five. It was kiddie-sex, you-show-me-yours-and- I'll-show-you-mine, but to us it was dizzying. We later had our first orgasms together and met sporadically for more of them all through high school, long after we were no longer friends. But now we're twelve, and it's 1978. We live in Scotia, a small town in upstate New York. There isn't much to do but ride our bicycles in search of mischief. Thus the day we wound up at Stewart's Ice Cream Parlor, and Pete ripped-off a copy of Penthouse. I stood stunned as I watched him fold the magazine and shove it down his pants. Before I could stop him, he was out the door. We pedaled back to his house as fast as we could. His parents were not home. Dropping the bikes in the garage, we ran straight for his bedroom and slammed the door. We played tug-of-war for the prize, wrinkling and tearing it. Pete was prone to tantrums and had a propensity to vomit when he didn't get his way, so I relented and let him hold the pages while I looked over his shoulder. There was only one dick shot; it was a big disappointment. We knew what we liked, even at that age. Pete bragged about once having seen Hustler and insisted it showed more dick. Emboldened by the heist and our boners, he vowed next time to grab one of those. We polished our technique. I distracted the clerk by ordering ice cream, and while her head was in the freezer, Pete snatched the magazine. I'd eat my cone, then we'd ride home fast. The luxury of hiding the stash was mine, since Pete's parents were permanently suspicious of him and often rifled through his things. I, however, had the perfect hiding place. There was once a laundry chute in my room. It consisted only of a recessed brass ring in the center of a one-foot-square cutaway in the plank floor. One was supposed to yank on the little ring, lift up the square of flooring, and drop the laundry to the kitchen downstairs. A broom closet had since been constructed underneath, and now there was nothing there but the kitchen ceiling below. Though off to the side, the nook continued into a one-foot-high crawl space between the top of the closet and the floorboards of my room. I stacked the magazines and pushed them neatly out of sight. Even if someone had thought to move my desk over and lift the cover, one would see nothing but plaster. The stealing continued. Pete and I branched out to Playgirl, which satisfied initially, but Anaïs Nin's fiction and articles on extending a woman's orgasm left me confused. Hustler was a better read, particularly the "Beaver Shots" section, which featured Polaroids sent in by subscribers. Those often showed dick in all sorts of contexts. The man who shot loads into the gas tank of his '74 Chevy Nova was my all-time favorite. (He insisted it made the engine run better.) It turned me on to know that there were all these adult sex freaks in the world. But Hustler had a humor I didn't fully grasp; it scared me a little. And there were all those vaginas. I did my best to overlook them, but they were garish and appeared on nearly every page. Pete took up after-school sports, and we spent less time together. Our friendship was waning, but my craving for sex increased. Unable to resist the temptation, I set off on my own. I got caught. The counter lady saw me fumbling with Playgirl in the security mirror. She told me that she knew my father, and that I'd better hurry along home and tell him what happened or she would. It was not implausible that she know him. Though he abhorred convenience stores, this was a small town. He was a physician, a hematologist, and a board member of every prominent organization in the tri-city area. We could never go anywhere without my dad running into people whose names he couldn't remember. But they always knew his. I panicked. He wasn't expected home for another four hours. I remained in my room, pacing and fretting, hiding my shame from Marilyn, our born-again cleaning lady who was vacuuming downstairs. She was forever trying to sit me down to talk about Jesus and my sister's satanic album covers. Now was not the time to be trapped in the kitchen with Marilyn. There had to be a way out of this. Having lied before, I knew that the essential step was to calm down and think things through, then deal with the inconsistencies later. It occurred to me that my exposure was predicated on the assumption that this convenience store clerk actually knew my father. She didn't look like a leukemia patient. Besides, was she really going to call and tell him if she thought I would do it for her? I remembered her patronizing grin. She could have been bluffing. I risked it and told him nothing. He never found out. The cravings intensified. I rode around town mostly solo now and saw Pete only when we wanted to "do stuff," our code for a sex rendezvous. I crossed the bridge to Schenectady, the nearest city, with greater frequency. It was off limits, but Scotia held no more mystery. One day, I stopped in front of a shop that advertised Coca-Cola on a rusty metal sign. Thirsty, I locked my bike to the railing outside and stepped in for a drink. Inside was a smoky old-fashioned newsstand, bigger than any I had seen before. Two old men sat by the register drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and watching an NFL game on a portable television. I bought a soda right away and wandered through the store. Hunting for porn, I got a boner when I spotted Playgirl. I pulled down a random publication from the rack and watched to see if the men were aware of me. They remained glued to the set. My hard-on raged, but I took my time. Next to Playgirl were two magazines I had never heard of: Blueboy and Honcho. I assumed they were the same as Playgirl, and for variation, chose the Blueboy. The edges of the glossy paper caught my underpants and scratched my thighs, but I managed to get them down and walked casually out. I rode home slowly, careful to keep the binding from jabbing me in the abdomen. Having to stop once to adjust it, I removed the mag from my pants for a preview. Straddling the bar of my ten-speed, I stood shocked at what I saw: all men. I had struck gold. Nothing held me back now, and I searched the Schenectady yellow pages for newsstands boasting the largest selections in the area. To find them, I off-handedly asked my parents the locations of the back-alleys and streets listed in the ads. "Over by the bus station," was usually the response. My stash grew, as did my shame. I even tried to dispose of the evidence. After having jacked off one day, I suffered a terrible crash into guilt. I took the whole pile and put it in a knapsack. The load proved too heavy to carry discretely, so I placed the best ones back under the floor and threw the rest into the woods just over our property line. It was a frantic move, one that I fretted over and prayed would be blamed on anonymous teenagers. The following September, I left for prep school in Connecticut. Not knowing what kind of privacy to expect, I left the collection where it lay, over the kitchen ceiling. Life in Scotia grew distant, but my mother and father called every weekend with updates. "Hi, honey! How's it going? How are your classes?" It was the usual Sunday conversation until the news came: "Everything is in a state of upheaval here. We're getting ready to re-do the kitchen! You won't believe it when you see it." It had always been a far-away plan to make this home improvement. My pulse raced. I asked if there were plans to tear down any walls. She told me that the contractor had already begun, starting with the broom closet and the ceiling. I held my breath and listened for any shred of disappointment or judgment. Only her chipper news report buzzed over the line. The call ended with the requisite warm wishes for a wonderful week and the excitement that I'd soon be home for Thanksgiving. I hung up the phone in a daze. There was nothing to do but wait. My father arrived to collect me on the third Wednesday in November. The renovation had been drastic; I raced to my room. The tips of freshly hammered nails protruded up toward me as I lifted away the cover from the floor. I cut my wrist trying to feel around; it bled. Everything was gone, all of it. Nobody confronted me or gave any indication that something was wrong. With each hour of freedom, I grew more relaxed, happy to be breathing the familiar scents of home, glad not to be crying in my bedroom. Mom and Dad kissed me goodnight with not a hint of disillusionment. School resumed the following Wednesday, and I was still at home Monday when Marilyn arrived with her feather duster and tales of Armageddon. Standing by the sink, she prattled on about the new kitchen counters showing every little crumb and what a nuisance it was to clean up after the construction crew, but that it was all OK, because she was in Jesus's hands. "They made such a mess, especially when they tore out the walls and ceiling. And they found your sisters' dirty magazines." I remained cool while Marilyn explained that one of the workers had been standing on a stepladder, banging away with a sledgehammer, when a cascade of pornography fell on his head. "I felt so ashamed for her," Marilyn said, adding that Barbara was in trouble with the Lord. I made a careful and concerned remark about Barb's strained relationship with my parents and asked if they knew what had happened. "I just threw those filthy magazines away and didn't tell, but I'm worried. That sister of yours is on a path to the devil. I'm praying for her." Marilyn had always insisted that she was an instrument of God, there in our lives to save us from damnation and to keep us from harm's way. My whole family thought she was crazy, and I imagine that she probably was at that moment she hauled out the trash. I tried to imagine it but stopped. I was free, and that was all that mattered. Andren White ©1999

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