Phil hurried to the address in the morning. It turned out to be a newsstand. Why had she brought him here?

His eyes wandered, as usual, to the top shelf.

***

1983 it was. Summer.

Phil wandered into the motel newsstand. He was looking for comic books.

There was an issue of Playboy. It was the Dirty Book, the one Good Boys Aren’t Supposed to Read. Normally it was on the top shelf. But not today. Someone had put it where they shouldn’t.

Dark whispers were spread about Playboy at school. It was said to have pictures of women in it, women with no clothes on.

Phil wondered what sort of man read it. Surely women would feel very uncomfortable in front of someone like that. He could not imagine ever admitting to such a thing.

His curiosity was about to kill its cat. He was too short for anyone to see him. He opened the magazine.

Women didn’t have dinks! Instead, they had…hair? Did it get wet when they went to the bathroom? And their chest! It had big round lumps on it, lumps whose purpose puzzled the boy.

That wasn’t as puzzling as what was happening to his dink. It was hardening. Just like it sometimes did when he had to go to the bathroom. He had never felt that way before. He did not understand it. It felt very good, but it was scary.

For weeks, months, years afterwards Phil was obsessed with the memory of those pictures. He would lie in bed at night, tossing and turning with the memories, feeling again the terrifying hardness in his dink. Touching it made it even harder. Eventually it all seemed to come together in an intense squirmy motion.

Phil never told anyone about his experiences. Surely no one else was engaging in such perversity. If anyone ever made teasing remarks about him and girls, he heatedly denied it. By the age at which porn began to circulate among other boys, Phil loudly proclaimed he would not read it, that he would never descend into the gutter. Nobody knew he touched his cock regularly, thinking first of that magazine, eventually of attractive girls in his class.

***

1975 it was. Spring.

Sue was walking through the park. Her eyes spied movement.

A chubby black boy had his face in a magazine. The boy’s name was Derek. He was Sue’s class.

Derek had a look of reverence in his face, as if reading the Bible. But it wasn’t the Bible. It was Penthouse. His hand was inside his pants. Sue stared longingly at his face, full of veneration, even worship. She wished so much that someone would look at her like that.

Why not? “Try the real thing,” she said boldly, stepping forward.

Derek looked terrified, squirming to hide the magazine under his ass, but Sue was already pulling off her clothes. She stood naked before him, young and cute and lewd. The sight of his crotch made her feel a sudden thirst. She’d heard girls talk about it.

Throwing caution to the wind, she sank to her knees, scrabbling in the dirt for his zipper…

She was roughly yanked to her feet. The policeman made her get dressed and frog-marched her home.

The luckless Derek was not in school the next day. Sue never saw him again. Teachers would only say that he didn’t come to their school anymore.

Years later, she found out his neighborhood, on the other side of the tracks, had been rezoned into a different school district.

***

“Enjoying the view?”

Phil felt very embarrassed. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry, you dork,” said Sue. “This is exactly why I brought you here.”

“What?”

“What’s your favorite magazine?”

“The New Yorker—”

“Porn magazine, you dingbat.”

Phil blushed. “Playboy.” She reached for the current issue. “Not that one,” he said. “This one.” He pulled out Playboy’s Book of Lingerie, which was burdened with neither articles nor advertising. Its models were less famous, but Phil wasn’t interested in celebrity.

She flipped through it.