Naturally, I suppose I would have cared less about getting caught masturbating if I hadn’t previously been told not to do… IT. But that directive put things in a whole new perspective, from that moment forward risk went hand in hand with reward when I gave myself a hand so to speak. My furtive searches finally yielded the key to an incomprehensible treasure, but I will get to that in a minute. For now suffice to say suddenly I’d found a map to the strange treasure that was buried deep within. Discovering the chart through bits and scraps offering clues I knew a key to a better understanding of my true self existed. Things like a book about astrological signs showed that in the stars, if I just connected the dots like those in my coloring books, suggested then I would find a picture of my exact nature, no matter even if it turned out to be something resembling an insect.

Something, I imagine, like this:

Farrell Timlake, a hard-on sporting kid, awoke one morning to find that he was transformed into a gigantic scorpion. Looking down at his body Farrell saw a golden body and a stinger at the end of a plated tail twitching uncontrollably. There was no explanation, except that reading a book about astrology he’d learned that Scorpios tended to have very sexual natures. This felt familiar to him, though he had no idea what it really meant. His blankets still covered him but there was a more tent-like quality to them. There was a Sears Catalog by the bed. He could hear distant voices raining down beckoning him to breakfast but he longed to roll over and forget “all that distraction”. Yet, he couldn’t go back to enjoying his ministrations, due to his new scorpion shaped form. He tried handling the stinger for another minute and petted it for a while, and during these exertions, he abruptly thought, “what if someone walks in and catches me doing this?”

So being a Scorpio meant I possessed a very sexual and sensual nature but what did this mean? Where could I find out more of an explanation? How could I get insight to this without revealing to others the purpose of my quest for knowledge while hindered at the same time by semi-consciously acknowledging that I couldn’t find a purpose as to why it was so important to me in the first place?  Which is why although the stars could show me the way, I still needed the key to understanding. Nothing was going to come easily. Everything henceforth would be a fight between me on the outside keeping a stiff upper lip and me on the inside walking around with a stiffy.

Luckily, as I mentioned already, I found the key.

It was hidden away behind the headboard of the great master bed in the room that kids were to avoid or risk hanging. There, beneath the extra pillows and the soft fleece blankets, I almost missed it but somehow I kept digging not really knowing whatever compelled me. I found the keys. A copy of Playboy. A copy of “Oui”. Yin and Yang of sex mags, and unearthing them meant finding the means to unlocking my destiny.

Of course, with that first admonishment the first seeds of shame were planted in a sandy soil, the true grit of my soul, and though the roots run deep to nourish from a wellspring of muddy guilt, my libido like a resilient scurrying little hungry for sex rodent burrows in. The landscape is a desert for inspiration but somewhere between the barren patches thorny fruits nourish my craving for something sexual, no matter how brittle and lacking in actual sexuality. A Sears catalog full of tons of crap an eight year old could care less about has just a few pages of brassiere ads offering scant but fulfilling enough nectar to feast my eyes on. Books by Freud offer suggesting tidbits but hide the tastiest morsels in Latin. (Years later I would spend a couple years learning Latin so as to be able to translate those passages… unfortunately I could never find the book again in my parent’s shelves.) Tough times, but I survive and learn to forage furtively.

In the scheme of things, arousal doesn’t necessarily inspire the spirit of courage but it can make one courageously curious on a quest for arousal’s inspiration. This became quite clear to me as I set out to more and more dangerous crags and crevices of the house to find whatever possible scrap where it may lay. Though the prospect of getting caught searching through my parent’s bedroom and their closets was severely unpleasant, the risk would ultimately merit the reward, but not without a few very, very, way too close for comfort close calls.

Of course, whoever thinks “what if… I get caught?”