April 4th in Posso's Prompts

“You cannot blame porn. When I was young, I used to masturbate to Gilligan’s Island.” — Ron Jeremy

My summers at my grandmas house were month long struggles of trying to pretend to be Mormon to fit in with the friends and family we were forced to hang out with all the while I was becoming a curious boy with a heightened sense of boobies in public. I remember avidly trying to tell which member of the Sunday school teachers had the biggest cans while I was taking shots of sacrament water in the back of the room.

Previous to this particular trip to Spanish Fork, Utah, my old man had sat me down on the couch and while leaned back in his recliner, said, “Well son, I’m going to watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and if you have any questions you can ask them.” I laughed and thought the movie was great for a 13 year old, and then I saw Pheobe Cates voluptuous sweater cannons come out of that red bikini and I was a changed boy. I remember my dad giggling at my open mouth. “Don’t tell your mom, but son, they get better when you get older.”

Enriched with this new sense of love for the women’s body along with the newly found secret that if you rub your moms special Victorias Secret lotion on your pecker with enough friction that you feel super happy and goo shoots out(?!?!?!) I was off to my grandmas for a couple weeks with no social regard for masturbatory boundaries.

I was bored. I was too big to play on a fucking swing set. My brothers and younger cousins were having a blast playing outside in my grandmas back yard with the sand box and cherry tree. Zac wasn’t having any of that. I knew my uncle, who had been living with my grandma on and off, had a ton of stashed secrets that I could reveal. I found my first Playboy mixed in with my uncles car magazines. I found my first porno videotaped along with episodes of Beavis and Butthead and The Tom Green Show. These didn’t stay secret for long though as my brothers couldn’t let me have my own peace. Imagine your mom finding out her eight year old son was watching Ron Jeremy rail a blonde over a couch armrest with his older brother. Yeah, that didn’t go over too well. So when I got the flu one day the rest of the family was going to the waterpark, I was thrilled. I didn’t care that I was sick, I wanted to see if the lotion motion worked still. The problem was that my grandma had confiscated all of my cool finds. I didn’t know if jerking off in silence was normal. That summer I had mastered timing my uncles VHS player to recording the blocks of music videos they still showed on MTV. My favorite music video that I had watched at the time was the video to Butterfly by Crazy Town. I was amazed that parents let their girls stick metal bars into their tongues and wear crazy glittery makeup and touch themselves in a way that made me want to touch everything. But, could I really pull on myself to a music video? Is that like, the right thing to do? Is their limits?

Fuck it. I put it on and watched the first time. Nothing happened though. I stopped listening to the music so much and just stared at the girl. We’ll save all the details for the movie I make about my jerk off escapades in the 2000s and let you know the ending. I came all over my grandmas basement couch. (Sorry, Mom, if you ever read this. Just know Grandma passed away without ever knowing I left part of myself on the basement couch)

I remember that summer being terrible. I was getting fatter, sweating a lot, and my dick hurt. Always. It wasn’t until my mother asked me about whether or not I was ‘touching myself’ that I realized - it was like eating - you couldn’t do it all of the time. I wasn’t sure why I had thought of this randomly while I was cleaning bottles at work tonight until I realized the song playing in the background on the jukebox.

Butterfly.

Come my lady, come come my lady, you’re my butterfly, sugar baby.