About A Boy

The boys in the photo (at left - h/t CH) look like me and my friends in suburban New York and Connecticut in the late '70s. We spent most of our free time outdoors. In fact, when I think back to my happiest moments, they invariably were outside, in forests and fields, creeks and lakes. Long days of bright sunshine. At weekends we would wear striped Adidas shoes--not Sambas or Gazelles, I forget the name of the model--windbreakers, polo shirts, and cruise around the neighborhood on our Schwinn Stingrays like a little biker gang. When we weren't hunting down big snapping turtles and crayfish in the creeks, we were fighting the other neighborhood boys.

The girls liked me and I liked them. They loved tousling my blond hair and daring me to kiss them and touch them. When I was around 7 or 8 I got into serious trouble with the school authorities who caught me kissing a cute little blonde girl, 'W,' after school one day. Her parents were not amused. I'll never forget the lecture I got from my father, who seemed very concerned. He was still in his three-piece Wall Street suit when he arrived home from work and sat me down in a darkened room for the talk. I like to think this incident didn't obstruct my pre-teen Game, but I'm not so sure.

It may sound odd to you, but there wasn't a time when I didn't think about sex. That I was precocious in this department would be an understatement. I became familiar with details of the female anatomy at a very young age, courtesy of various teenage babysitters, including a set of hot Italian/Jewish twins and a young Persian nanny whose wealthy parents in Iran sent her to live with us right before the revolution. I'll write more about her later.