The two weeks at camp were filled to overflowing. I played soccer every morning, except Sunday - we even played those two rainy days. (I lucked out, and got morning soccer and late-afternoon instructional swimming. Morning soccer was great because the day wasn't hot yet; afternoon swimming was great because the lake had warmed up by then.) Soccer was scrimmages the first week, games the second.

Y-camp policy was to rotate players to different teams, and to rotate players through positions on each team as well. At first, Phil and I - and Tony, and Tommy and Chuck from the bus, and other new friends - were bummed that we couldn't stay on a team together. Soccer, like any team sport, depends on intimate knowledge of how your teammates' playing styles mesh with your own, and you can't learn that unless you're together day after day.

Good soccer is when you plan and execute the play, and the play unfolds like clockwork. But great soccer is when the play unfolds in a way you didn't expect... and one of your teammates, a kid who's very perceptive, reads that change and responds, and you pick up on what he's doing, and suddenly there's a brand-new play, created in the heat of the moment, totally unplanned... and it works. That doesn't happen often. But when it does, it's a memory you have the rest of your life.

And there's the simple, wonderful camaraderie of boyhood team play. I've played my share of adult-league softball and soccer, and there's adult camaraderie, of course; but it's not the same.

Despite the lack of team continuity, we came to appreciate the Y-camp rotation strategy. For one thing, I got to play with and against the older boys, some of whom were on school teams or were serious rec-league players. I learned alot of good soccer from those two weeks. I don't believe in false modesty, so I'll say with a touch of pride that I held my own against them, too. I still savor the moment when I was playing striker forward (literally the front-and- center offense position), and scored a deadly-accurate goal past two bigger defenders and right through the legs of a 16 year-old high-school goalie. They stopped the game, and everybody, including Kurt, the goalie, came over and pounded me on the back or shook my hand. I got a swelled head at that point. And - as is utterly appropriate - I was taken back down a peg or two over the next couple of days, in which I passed out of bounds, missed penalty shots by a mile, and at one point fell on my butt in the process of cleanly missing a foot-trap. They didn't stop the game, but there was a pause while everybody laughed their butts off. So much for Danny, the 9 y/o superstar.

Y-camp was more than sports. The YMCA stands for certain principles, many related to the "C" in YMCA. (In case anyone doesn't know: "YMCA" stands for "Young Men's Christian Association".) We had religious services every evening and on Sunday morning, and those semi-nightly cabin prayers, and saying grace at meals. My religious beliefs are not fixed to this day, but I was and am open-minded; and I never minded the religious stuff, although sometimes I took an irreverent attitude about it.

Assemblies weren't completely about religion, however. We had another assembly - a special assembly - one evening. The name of this assembly was "Boy Talk."

The boys were only allowed to attend if their parents had signed permission slips. (Most did, including my mom). We wondered at first what it was about - I didn't remember my mom talking about the permission thing, and the camp schedule just called it "Boy Talk" - no explanation. Phil and I and some other kids talked about it a little bit on the bus ride to camp, and none of us knew. We didn't give it much thought - it was far down our personal lists of interesting stuff about Y-camp.

Well, Joe clued us in, the second evening: "Boy Talk" was - gasp - sex education. We were walking back to the cabin from vespers that evening, and somebody said something about assembly being "boring". Joe said, "Bet you won't get bored at the 'Boy Talk' assembly." That prompted my curiosity, and I asked, "What's the 'Boy Talk' assembly?" Joe came over next to me and whispered in my ear, "It's about sex." I started giggling, involuntarily. Joe's whisper and my reaction got everybody's attention, and a clamor of voices began: "What did you tell him, Joe? What is it, Danny? Tell us, tell us tell us..." Counselor Hal intervened at that point: "You'll find out when it happens." He was smiling.

As I mentioned, right after assembly was cabin quiet time. That second evening, almost immediately after we got back to the cabin, Hal announced that he had to take a leak, and we were to behave ourselves while he went down to the latrine and left us alone (our other counselor had vanished by this time). Hal was gone at least 10 minutes - longer than necessary just to take a leak. At the time I didn't give that any thought. But I'll bet one of three things: (a) He had to do more in the latrine than just pee (no, not j/o - it wasn't private in there at all); (b) he ran into a friend and started talking; or - my guess - (c) he deliberately stayed away so we could get our questions answered about the sex talk. Hal was okay with boy-sexuality, as later events proved. I always felt like Hal was on our side, and enforced some rules only because he had to.

Well, whatever Hal's motives - as soon as he left, we besieged Joe for details. I got the ball rolling: "Hey, Joe, you gotta tell us about the 'Boy Talk'. It's about" - I looked around at all the others - "sex." Giggling from all corners. Most kids had figured out by this point that it was sex. When one boy whispers in another boy's ear, and the other boy giggles, it's not hard to guess. So the others came over to our end of the cabin and demanded details. Everybody came over except Brian and Rob. Brian was reading his Bible, as he did every evening, and Rob was just being a jerk, I suppose.

Joe told us he'd been to the talk every year. Boy Talk was always conducted by the camp doctor, and Joe said it was different every time - Y-camp had a different camp doctor each year, and I guess it was up to him to decide what to say. We had a new doc this year, too, so Joe said he couldn't tell us what to expect. He told us the previous docs had spent most of the time trying to scare the kids with lurid details about diseases that would rot your pecker off, and how a girl could get pregnant even if she and her boyfriend dry- humped with all their clothes on. Joe told us that he thought it was mostly just scare-stuff, so we wouldn't try to have sex till we were married. I doubt there was a kid listening who didn't know the basics about sex. But as we all know, there's a lot of myth, exaggeration, and misinformation floating around at 9 or 10 or 11 years old.

Somebody asked if the doc talked about how to "do it." Joe said, "Oh, yeah, like he's gonna tell us how to screw girls?" That question made my mind jump to a question of my own. I'm impulsive about blurting out what's on my mind, so immediately I asked Joe, "Well, does he talk about jacking off?"

Joe looked at me. He wasn't startled or taken aback, exactly. But I got the sudden, clear impression that he wasn't expecting that kind of question from me - and that, by asking it, I had changed things between us. Joe said to me: "Jacking off? You know about that?"

His question had a profound effect on me. It wasn't just a question about what I knew, as it seemed on the surface. It was a question about what I did. It's hard to convey that in written words, but it was clear in his tone of voice, and the way he looked at me. His question put me on the spot. I'd been jacking off for two years, but I knew it was private and I wasn't quite ready to blurt it out to everyone.

I didn't want to say that to the whole group. But I realized I wanted to say it to Joe. I already knew he attracted me. I had seen him in his underwear, the night before, and he wasn't a little boy in his briefs. I'd seen him naked earlier that afternoon, and I knew he was pubescent, and that was awesome. At that moment, I wasn't afraid or ashamed to tell him I knew about jacking off - and more. I vividly remember what I wanted to say to him, and would've said to him if we'd been alone. I had the words formed clearly in my head: "Hell, yes, I know about that. I've been doing it for two years. And you know about it, too. I can tell. And you have a big dick, and I'll bet you can shoot sperm, and I want to do it with you... or to you." That marked the beginning of my conscious, conspicuous desire to fool around with Joe, sexually. That desire had been inside me, but it was subliminal until that moment.

All this happened in less than a second, I think. Joe went on before I had a chance to think of a publicly-acceptable answer: "They talked about it a little bit, but more about wet dreams and stuff like that." Richie asked, "Wet dreams? What's that?" We'd been talking quietly, almost in whispers, but Richie asked his question in a normal tone of voice. We all shushed him. The cabin wasn't a great place for private conversations.

Rob had been reading or something over on his bunk, and ignoring us. But when Richie asked his question, Rob said, "You don't need to know - you're too young." That pissed me off. I said to Rob, "He ain't too young. What's your problem?" Rob said, "Shut up, Danny. I'm not talking to you." Now I was really pissed. I glared at Rob and said, "Well, I'm talking to you, dipshit. And I said he ain't too young to hear about wet dreams, and I meant it." Rob glared back at me, furious, and for a second I thought he was going to get up and come across to me, but then he stopped. (At the moment I didn't know why. Later I was talking to Joe and Tony and some others, and they pointed out that in order to pound me, Rob would've had to wade through all of them - and most of them were glaring at him, too.) Rob grunted something under his breath and turned away.

So I guess that was my first near-fight at camp. I never got into an actual fistfight at Y-camp, but my mouth got me close to it a few times. I think that evening with Robb would've been justified. I'm still thoroughly pissed today at the idea of anybody telling a kid he's "too young" to know about sex. Or the idea of anybody picking on a younger kid, period.

Richie was very embarrassed at this point. But Joe answered his question, clearly and directly: "It's when you have a sex dream, and your sperm comes out while you're asleep." Richie looked confused, and started to ask, "Sperm? Is that when -" But right at that moment, we heard footsteps outside. I'm certain everyone else had the same thought I did - "It's Counselor Hal!" We froze, waiting for the door to open. It didn't - and the steps receded. Someone else, just walking past the cabin. But it broke the mood, and made us a little nervous. Joe said, "Aww, y'all will find out all about it this weekend."

And that was the end of the impromptu sex-ed in Cabin W_____ that night. We all went back to our bunks. (Actually, I was already on mine - the whole conversation had taken place with everyone sitting on my bunk, Tony's bunk, our phantom 2nd-counselor's bunk, or the floor.) I was left thinking that Boy Talk might be intriguing. I didn't dwell on it, but any info on boys, masturbation and puberty was welcome.

Boy Talk was held on Saturday evening, the second of the two rainy evenings we had at camp. Seven of the nine kids in Cabin W_____ (poor Richie had gone home earlier that afternoon) had permission - the two exceptions were Bible-reading Brian (no surprise), and Tony, which did surprise me. I asked him about it, and he just shrugged and said his mom said he couldn't go. He hadn't gone the year before, either. (I'm guessing now that maybe it was a Catholic thing - we did hear about contraception and masturbation and other things that the Pope doesn't approve of.) I told him I would tell him everything he was missing. He liked that idea.

We walked up to the mess-hall with Hal and got seats near the back of the semi-circled rows of chairs. I ended up between Phil and Frank, with Joe on the other side of Frank. (Poor Frank, who was a good-natured but somewhat naive kid, ended up hearing all the naughty side-comments that Joe and I could think of during the talk. I'm sure his sex education grew by leaps and bounds that evening, and not just from the doc's words.)

After we were all in place, the camp doctor came up front, introduced himself, told us that "Boy Talk" was - gasp - sex education (which I doubt was news to anyone by that point), and then proceeded to give us a lecture. I recall most of what he said - and it was mostly scare-tactics. He started by telling us that some of the information might surprise or bother us, but that our parents had signed us up because they cared about us and thought it was important information for us to know.

It went downhill from there. He spent maybe five minutes telling us what sexual intercourse was in very general terms (no other type of sex mentioned, of course), and another 2-3 minutes telling us how it was a good thing for married adults, one of the things we'd most value when we got married. Then, straight into the scary stuff. We were told that you could get a disease from having sex with "the wrong girl" only one time, and so you should never have sex with anyone before marriage, and then only with your wife. He lectured us about all the horrible venereal diseases that could strike you if you even got close to having sex before marriage. He must have listed all the symptoms of advanced syphilis, I think.

There was some talk about pregnancy in there, too, but I'm a little hazy on that aspect - some things about being ready for fatherhood. He quickly touched on contraception - he mentioned only condoms, and told us they weren't reliable. (Poor Frank whispered to me at this point, "What's a condom, Danny?" [the doc hadn't told us!] I whispered back, "He means a rubber... you know?" Frank shook his head. I whispered, "Like a tight rubber sleeve that you shoot your sperm into, so it doesn't get inside the girl and get her pregnant." He looked at me with this uncertain grin. I could tell he half-thought I was kidding him again. Later, walking back to the cabin, I described rubbers in more detail, with Joe and a couple of others chiming in; and he got it that time.)

At some point the doc started talking about puberty - voice changing, growing hair, oily skin, etc. Then he said, "This is also when you start noticing that you can produce sperm." Joe leaned over to Frank and me at that point and said, "He means, you can jack off." Frank got embarrassed and didn't say anything. I started to whisper back to Joe, "You don't have to have sperm to jack off." I thought better of it - I still wasn't quite ready to blurt out to anyone listening that I'd been doing it for two years. But again, my desire welled up, immediately and powerfully. I wanted to say to Joe, "You don't have to have sperm to jack off. I can prove it. Let me prove it to you. And you can show me what it's like when you do have sperm. We can teach each other some stuff. I want that." That was a clear, conscious thought. I stifled it. I could do anything about it, sitting there in the mess-hall. But thoughts like that never vanish; they just don camouflage, and lie waiting.

The doc did discuss masturbation, but very vaguely. He was just about finished with masturbation before I even caught on to what he was talking about. He called it "exploring your body." I couldn't figure that out at first - I thought he meant something like looking in the mirror. I caught on when he said something like, "Some of you might have already noticed that when you 'explore your body', you produce sperm." To his credit, the doc told us that there was nothing wrong with this "exploring", and that we shouldn't feel ashamed of the urges. He went on and talked about wet dreams - told us that we shouldn't feel odd or worry if we woke up and found that our PJs or underwear or the sheets were wet or stiff. (Joe later informed us that wet dreams were bad for you, because you might get weak the next day and you couldn't run as fast or jump as high, or whatever. I thought at the time he could be right - I'd never had one, so what did I know? Joe was right about a lot of other sex things.)

Unfortunately, after the solid info on jacking off and wet dreams, the doc went back to scare-tactics. The biggest crock of all concerned homosexuality. He gave us all this scary "information" about homosexuals in raincoats who preyed on little boys. You got the impression from the doc's words that all homosexuals wore raincoats; and every homosexual was assigned by Homo Headquarters to a school playground, where he would wait with candy in his pockets for unsuspecting little boys to fall into his evil trap. Oh, and every single one of them was BIG. He might have implied that they all had red glowing eyes, although I could be imagining that part.

Now, this was an area where little Danny's knowledge was slim. I didn't know anyone who was openly gay. (I can't remember if I'd even heard the word "gay" at that point, in fact.) And I'd heard all the epithets and put-downs on the playground, like every other 9 y/o boy. Although part of my mind (the cynical part) thought the doc's spiel was all B.S., I remember worrying about a big scary homo grabbing me off the sidewalk.

Oddly, I now wonder if the doc, and/or similar talks and info we'd heard about homosexuality, inadvertently made it easier for us boys at camp to experiment with each other, grabbing weenies and such, by implying that homosexuals were adult men. Possibly he even contributed to my lack of guilt feelings later. I never felt much angst over boy-sex - not till age 16. For at least a year after camp, I didn't connect looking at or fooling around with other boys as homosexual, because I assumed that kids couldn't be homosexual. I think my Big 3 Books finally gave me a more accurate picture, and even that took some time to sink in.

After the lecture portion of his talk, the doc took questions from the boys. The very first question was about whether you could get venereal diseases from toilet seats - unbelievably, the doc said, "It's possible, so be careful." I knew that was B.S.; I think most of the boys did - nobody in our cabin believed him (or admitted it if they had). Other questions were asked about stuff like acne and shaving. One kid asked the doc if any homosexuals had ever tried to "bother" him, and the doc said, in a grave tone, "Yes - a number of different men have approached me."

Somewhere in the midst of Q&A, Joe leaned over and whispered, "Danny! I dare you to ask him if he beats off." I had a reputation by the end of that first week as a kid who didn't turn down dares. I actually considered doing it for a second; but common sense won out over pride that time, and I grinned and shook my head. Joe whispered, "You coward!", but he was smiling.

On the way back from the assembly, strolling through the rain, we had a lot of talk, and some good laughs, about some of the stuff we'd heard. Counselor Hal had managed to go on ahead - again, I don't know if that was on purpose, but it was cool regardless. Joe was the expert; he genuinely knew a lot, despite goofs like the wet dream thing. We concluded that in general the doc was trying to scare us, although he might have a point on some things, like the lurking homos and the pregnancy info. We had a variety of opinions, though - Phil told us that a girl couldn't get pregnant the first time, and refused to budge. And good old obnoxious Rob wanted to argue with us about a lot of our conclusions. He claimed, for example, that jacking off was a sin and you'd go to hell. Rob wasn't all that religious - he was obviously just being a prick about it. He was still arguing when we got back to the cabin. Hal finally told him to quit arguing. Even Hal didn't care much for Rob.

In retrospect, the thing that surprises me about this talk is that it took place at all - and especially that they let the 9 and 10 y/o boys attend. I mean, sex-ed was still controversial nationally in the US, and this was the Deep South. (It was, in fact, the one and only formal exposure I ever had growing up to sex education, aside from some health-class stuff that was so vague as to be meaningless.) Age 9 seems young for the standards of the time to be hearing about masturbation, for example. (Incidentally, the 8 y/o's were not present - I guess 9 was the lower limit for Boy Talk.) Joe told us that this doc did go into more detail than earlier Boy Talks about masturbation and wet dreams and puberty. I won't give that doc credit for scaring us about gays and toilet seats - but I will applaud him and the YMCA for telling kids what they need to know, at an age when they need to hear it. I think masturbation should be discussed long before puberty. Many boys are doing it from kindergarten onward. I could've used that info before age nine.

I remembered thinking at several points that it was too bad Richie had left before Boy Talk. He needed to know, and he wanted to know. He had sat there with the rest of us and listened when Joe had explained sex earlier in the week, and he had asked questions. I don't know if he even had a permission slip. No matter - I would have been happy to tell him anything he wanted to know, and so would the rest of us. Boys have the right to know about sex.

When we got back to the cabin, Tony and Brian were still gone. Basketball was the alternative activity to Boy Talk for the kids without their parents' permission. Within a few minutes Tony and Brian walked in. I was sitting on my bunk, wiping off with a towel (totally ludicrous, since I knew bath-time was next). Tony came over to my bunk immediately, sat down next to me, and asked in a low voice, "So what did they tell ya?" I was getting ready to reply, when Counselor Hal said, "All right, everybody's here, so let's go take care of baths and get back up here for quiet time." Everybody grumbled, and Hal said, as he did every night, "Come on, y'all - the quicker you do it, the longer you get for quiet time." I always thought that was silly - who wants more quiet time at camp? I wanted more noise time. :) But there was no putting it off, so we got ready. Hal told us to put our towels and clean underwear in our gym bags, since it was still raining.

Scents and odors don't always make me react, sexually or otherwise. The visual is usually more important; so is touch. But when scent hits me, it hits me hard. And when Tony came in and sat next to me on my bunk that evening, his scent hit me hard. He'd been playing basketball and he was sweaty. And he'd walked back in the rain, and that smell was present and mingled with his sweat.

When Hal called bath time, Tony took his shoes and socks off, then stood up and pulled his T-shirt off over his head, and pulled his shorts down and stepped out of them. All these actions were completely routine. I was doing the same thing simultaneously; so was everyone else. But... we'd just come from all this talk about sex, and that was still very much in my mind. And Tony's smell, and then watching him strip, got me aroused. I had never noticed his nipples before, although I'd seen him shirtless countless times by now. His penis and testicles were small but noticeable in his briefs. His thighs, and his butt inside his tight briefs... This was all routine. But I was switched on at that moment, all at once, and everything affected me.

Erections weren't uncommon at Y-camp. Many boys got them during skinny- dipping, at least momentarily. I got them as often as anyone. And they didn't embarrass me then - I never cared about others seeing my boners. I knew they were natural, and anyway I just wasn't embarrassed about much of anything. But this time, it felt different to me - I was aroused by a specific boy, standing right next to me. I wasn't embarrassed, exactly, but I remember thinking, "I'd rather not let Tony and the others notice it, this time."

I can only remember a few times as a kid that I was reluctant to let another boy see me with an erection. Ironically, when I finally succeeded in having sex, with Alex one year later, I had initially been reluctant to let him see that I was hard. Maybe the best way to put it, is that ordinary erections didn't embarrass me. Emotional erections were different.

We finished stripping to our briefs and got our soap and towels and clean underwear and stuffed them in our bags. Fortunately, the busy-ness of all that caused me to wilt. We went out the door and down the steps and across the path to the shore, where we always bathed. It was full dusk, and all we could see of each other was the glimmer of our white briefs and the more muted colors of our rainbow assortment of gym bags. Bathing was on the buddy-system, and since I had walked down with Tony, we wound up bathing together that evening. As always when we were together, we were talking away about something - baseball, if I recall correctly. At the water's edge, we dropped our bags, stripped and slid into the water.

Counselor Hal was supposed to have a buddy - our missing phantom counselor - but of course that wasn't feasible. (I really wonder if they ever found out about how slack that guy was...) So he always stayed off to one side, where he could watch everyone and make sure nobody drowned or whatever. Hal wasn't near Tony and me. So as soon as we got in the water, Tony came closer to me, and said, "Okay, Danny... tell me about the sex stuff."

I remember to this day the sound of those words, in Tony's high-pitched 9 y/o prepubescent boy's voice. It was intensely erotic. I saw Tony naked many times, I saw him with an erection more than once, and I grabbed his stiff weenie and he grabbed mine during our special games of water-tag. But I don't think anything he ever said or did made me more damn excited that those words that evening. Tony's words are right up there in my memory with "If I show you mine, will you show me yours?"

Of course, I told him as much about Boy Talk as I could, in the few minutes we had. There was no way to make bath-time linger, because we came and went as a group; and even if Hal had let us, nobody wanted to hang around in the soapy lake-shallows. I skipped all the scare-info, and went straight into telling him about masturbation. I didn't consciously have it in mind, but I think my subconscious was heading in the direction of a demonstration. I didn't consciously think "I want to jack off with Tony", but it was the undercurrent. I was feeling my stiff weenie underwater as we stood there talking, and I did consciously think, for a brief moment, that it would be easy to take Tony's hand and put it on my cock. I hadn't jacked off since before camp had started. In those pre-puberty days, I didn't feel any pressure to j/o regularly, the way I did after I started ejaculating. It was just something fun to do when I thought about it. But I knew what getting horny was all about. At that moment, I was horny. And it was all about Tony, at that moment.

We got to talk about it for maybe three minutes, max. Tony just listened mostly. When I said that the doc told us we shouldn't feel ashamed or guilty for masturbating, he said, "Okay", with a distinct note of relief. I guess he'd already been hearing the Catholic party-line on "destroying millions of potential Christians", or however they phrased it back then.

This was one of the two times at camp that I consciously wanted to get another boy interested in sexual activity with me, the other being with Joe at the end. It didn't happen, of course, and in retrospect that's okay, maybe for the best. Tony was interested in sex, clearly. But I don't think he was at the point of wanting to experiment. I don't believe it's inherently unhealthy for an experienced boy to jump-start an inexperienced boy's interest in sex. I did that often. But there is a readiness point. It's hard to define, and it's certainly not a chronological age; but it's there. Im hindsight, I'm glad I didn't press Tony on the matter. That would've been a selfish act on my part.

All too soon, bath-time was over. I whispered to Tony, "I'll tell you the rest later," and he whispered, "Okay... maybe tomorrow" (as it happened, we didn't get to finish the conversation until we were in our canoe with Phil, heading for wilderness camp, five days later). We splashed off the last of the soap, found our Ivory bars, and waded out. I still had an erection, but it was full dark now and I didn't think I'd have any problems, unless Hal decided to turn the flashlight on me. We "dried off" as best we could with the rain still coming down, put on our underwear and flip-flops, and trudged back up the slope to the cabin. By the time we got there, I was beginning to lose my boner.

That was the limit of my desperate desire for Tony. It flashed on suddenly, when I caught his scent. And somewhere between the lake and the cabin, it flashed back off, as suddenly as a red neon sign blinking in my mind. I saw him naked, before and after that evening, and even grabbed his hardon and he grabbed mine during grab-the-weenie, and I wanted and liked all that - but it wasn't a matter of wanting him, the way I did in the cabin and in the lake that evening. When he sat down on my bunk, smelling like boy-sweat and rain, his basketball shirt and shorts clinging to his body; and later, in the water, when he said, in effect, Danny, I want to know about sex, tell me - I wanted him, big time. The desire rose up in me like a sudden summer thunderhead rising over a dry afternoon. It was there and gone in a few seconds. But the power was strong enough to crackle like heat lightning across the sky. I was waking up.