Chapter 1
Sacramento - June, 1955
The summer heat was getting to me. I'd staved off the fever for as long as I could but my body had reached its boiling point. I couldn't take it anymore.
The feeling came on in rolling waves. A deep ache in my testicles, which felt so full and heavy, I feared they might burst. That wasn't a real thing, at least not that I'd heard of. But it felt like it.
All I knew—or believed—was that touching myself was wrong. It was the only message I'd ever received at the private Catholic school I attended.
"Don't play with your wee-wee," a nun once scolded me after walking into the bathroom to find me slapping mine around like a sausage at a urinal. I'd spent too much time in there, so she came barreling in and caught me red-handed, so to speak. I was so mortified that I never tried it again.
I was fourteen at the time. I guess you could say I was a late bloomer. The feelings intensified as I matured, going from a dull rumble to an overwhelming roar inside my body.
Eventually, I found relief in my dreams. I could never remember what I'd dreamt, but whatever it was would jostle me from my sleep. When I woke up, my underwear was stained with a wet, sticky substance I eventually learned to be semen.
The aftermath was an odd combination of deep shame and great relief. The aching was gone, but I'd wasted my seed. I was told that semen was supposed to be saved for marriage. It was only to be used for making a baby. But I couldn't help it. My body just seemed to store it up until it exploded out of me.
There were a lot of questions I had about this subject. I could never talk to my mother about them. I often wished my father was still around. Tragically, he died in a car wreck when I was ten.
Fast forward to the summer after I graduated from high school. I'd just celebrated my eighteenth birthday. Up until that time, I'd had those sticky, wet dreams once a week, two weeks at the most. But they stopped happening sometime around the first of June. Several weeks passed by and not a drop. I felt like a clogged drain.
Then one Sunday morning, the solution presented itself to me in a muscle magazine. I'd gone over to the corner drugstore by my house after morning Mass. Browsing the magazines was my usual routine on Sundays. A little bit of heaven after a little bit of hell.
I hated the doldrums of Catholic church. All that kneeling on uncomfortable benches and reciting those tiresome prayers. The only way I got through it was imagining the reward of getting a magazine after.
Oh, how I reveled in my reward too.Adonis,Physique Pictorial, and Tomorrow's Manwere my favorite magazines. They seemed to be the standards. Each issue featured handsome young men, oiled up and flexing their muscles in skimpy bathing shorts that didn't leave much to the imagination.
I loved posing straps the most. Those tiny garments that covered the men's front business in a pouch, with spaghetti-thin straps that wrapped around their waistline, split into a 'Y' shape in the back and disappeared into the dark crevice of their round buttocks. Simply delicious.
Sometimes the men didn't wear anything at all. They'd just be casually running around by the ocean without any clothes on like a couple of knuckleheads. Or sunning themselves on the rocks by a river.
The sight of those men awakened a stirring in me. At first, I figured it was just excitement about the prospect of someday looking like them too. I'd buy the magazine, devour the pages in one sitting, and then try to burn off the energy by doing jumping jacks, push-ups, and sit-ups.
But I just couldn't seem to gain much muscle. I had a lean, tight body, not much hair. I was in good shape, but nothing like the men in the magazines.
Eventually, I realized it was more than just body envy. Not only did I aspire to look like those men someday; it was something more. I wanted to touch them, to feel their skin against mine. I wondered what they tasted like. What they smelled like. I wanted to dip my fingers inside one of those pouches and scoop up the sweat that had accumulated in the darkest, dankest regions.
Whew.
Anyway, one Sunday afternoon, I went to the drugstore after church. I was flipping through the pages, feeling this awful ache inside me, when a folded slip of paper fell out from the inner seam of the magazine. The note was hand-written:
Do you suffer from embarrassing male problems that you can't talk to your primary physician about? Come and see Dr. Doyle at 207 X Street for a free examination. Very discreet. Evenings: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
What a gas. I folded up the paper and stuffed it into my pocket, figuring it was someone trying to be funny.
By the twenty-fourth of June, I was desperate for relief. I'd thought about going to see our family doctor. He'd cared for me since I was born. He even went to the same church as we did. But I was afraid he'd blame me for the aching down below. Worse yet, I was afraid he'd tell my mom. So I decided to check out the address from the slip of paper.
It was a Friday night. The sun had gone down, but the darkness didn't do much to stifle the heavy heat. I rode my bicycle to X Street. The trip was uncomfortable, to say the least. The pressure of the seat crushed against my swollen walnuts.
So there I was, staring at a plain brick building on the outskirts of downtown. The area was kind of sketchy looking. Not surprising for X Street. Alphabet streets intersect with numbered streets in Sacramento. The further down the alphabet you went, the worse the area was rumored to be. I'd nearly reached the end of the line.
There wasn't even a sign over the door. Just a small white card tucked into a window:Bathhouse & Spa Entrance, Men Only.
That seemed kind of odd to me. I didn't know public bathhouses still existed. A vague recollection swam in my head. Something from history class involving Ancient Greece. I tried turning the doorknob, but it was locked, so I knocked.
A small cut-out popped open from the middle of the door and a man's suspicious scowl appraised me. He eyed me up and down. "Yes?"
"Um, I'm here to see the doctor." I shuffled my feet, wondering if I had the wrong place. Maybe it was a joke after all.