Now I know that gender identity is fluid, with many tangible and intangible components, but when I was a kid, it was all about boys and girls, so distinct that they might as well be separate species.
What made a boy a boy:
1. Short hair.
2. A shirt and pants.
3. A lack of makeup, nail polish, and perfume.
4. Muscles.
5. A penis.
Mostly a penis.
I wasn't yet aware that it grows bigger and stronger, or that you can use your hand or mouth to bring the guy to organsm.
But I knew that it was the most private, intimate, and dangerous part of the body.
My father told me that I must never display it, even by accident. Hide it at a urinal. Make sure no one sees you when you are changing clothes in the locker room. Never go skinny dipping.
Sometimes "dirty boys" might ask to see it, or touch it, but I must always recoil in disgust.
In fact, I must never touch my own penis, except when urinating or washing. Never at night, in bed.
I definitely noticed. Even in grade school, I knew how to sneak peeks beneath the belt, gauging bulges, mentaly calculating sizes and shapes, detecting slight movements, shifts, and semi-arousals.
The first bulge I remember was on my fifth birthday, in November 1965.
Mom and I were both sick. I was sad and worried as she lay in bed.
I got a Tell-the-Time Clock with a smiley face and gloves on its hands, but I was too sick to play with it. There wasn't any cake.
I sat on the couch with Dad, sipping 7-Up and watching tv. First The Flintstones, and then Tammy, with a sugary mawdlin song that I hate today, maybe because I associate it with being sick, or maybe because Dad sang it at odd moments for the next thirty years.
I hear the cottonwoods whisperin' above.
Tammy--Tammy-Tammy's in love.
It was a hayseed sitcom (1965-66) about a bayou gal who becomes the secretary for a powerful industrialist and sets her sights on his fey son.
In the episode that aired on my fifth birthday, Tammy is courting a boy named Peter Tate (David Macklin), who doesn't really like girls. He's just playing along.Do you see something extra beneath the belt? He forgot to wear underwear that day.
How about now, with a semi filling out his chaps?Remember, guys -- including cameramen -- always pretend not to notice, so lots of bulges and semis get captured on film.
David Macklin popped up -- and out -- again and again during my childhood. A teen surfer on Gidget (1966). A fratboy on The Munsters (1966). A hippie on Ironside (1968). An abused rich kid on Cannon (1973).
And it all began on my fifth birthday.
A much better gift than a Tell-the-Time Clock.
S
According to the IMDB, David Macklin appeared in three episodes of "Tammy," but not the one that aired on my birthday. My childhood memory is a little mixed up.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you were watching a rerun.
ReplyDeleteThat made me think of another rural/urban divide. Urinals. Other than at a stadium, where a large basin is the preferred urinal, big cities, in my experience, have more partitions between urinals than small towns. Suburbs even more so. Newer buildings actually are more likely to have partitions than older buildings.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I'm thinking of all the penises I saw over the years in men's rooms and locker rooms. Really, it started with me being curious about how I stacked up. I think it's more of a narcissistic thing now, knowing I'm bigger than him.
I'll do you one better. Tarzan the Magnificent and Tarzan and the Great River both have serious wardrobe malfunctions, but because it's for a split second, no one noticed or figured we wouldn't have the technology to go frame by frame.
ReplyDelete