Tree Forts, BB Guns, and Masturbation

His name was Derek.
He lived on the next street over.

Our houses shared a wooded property line,
and we beat out a pretty good trail traipsing back and forth.

Our house was on the main street—
set back, with a nice tree line to block the sound of passing cars.
Not that there were many.
It was the country, after all.

Well, he lived there half the time.
The other half he lived with his mom.

We would hang out after school all the time.
My mom didn’t really like him.
He was a couple years older than me, and she didn’t like that.
His dad lived with his girlfriend in sin, as my mother put it.
She definitely didn’t like that.

Together we built a small tree fort.
It was in one of the trees just off the side of the road.

I had gotten a pump-action BB gun from Eric—my dad’s brother.
Well… I kind of took it from his place when we visited.

We used to park ourselves in the tree fort
and shoot cans off the fence across the street.

Eventually, we got adventurous
and started aiming at the cars as they passed.
Just the hubcaps.
We didn’t want to break any windows.

One day, the mail truck was bumbling down the road.
I was laying up there, watching it, tracking it with the gun.

“Gonna shoot the tires out?” Derek asked.

“Nah. I’m aiming for the eagle on the side of it.”

I squeezed the trigger.
Shoomp—the spring and air launched the BB toward the mail truck.
The satisfying pitink echoed as the pellet hit the metal.

“Hand it over,” Derek said, holding out his hands.
I gladly handed it off.

Fooomp.
The pellet left the muzzle.

No pitink this time.

“You missed!” I said.

The mail truck came to a screeching halt.

“No I didn’t. Run.”

The mail truck turned around, barreling toward my driveway.

We dropped out of the fort and into the woods,
running as fast as we could.

Derek had shot through the open window and hit the driver.

The driver found Granny at the house.
I stayed clear until long after he left.

When I got home that night,
I got a good beating from Dad
for shooting the mailman.

When we weren’t up in the tree fort shooting mailmen,
Derek and I would hang out at his place.

He had a nicer computer than I did, his Tandy had a color screen.
We’d listen to bass tapes and play games on the computer.

His dad and dad’s girlfriend weren’t home much.
So we’d also look at nude magazines.

Derek asked me if anyone had ever shown me how to jack off.

“Nope.”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s like this.”
And he showed me.

We’d hang out, look at nudes, and jack off.
We’d try different techniques.
Sometimes we’d trade hands.

I came up with a game I called milking the cow.
One of us would get on all fours,
and the other would jack that person off from behind.

Once or twice, when I was in the cow position,
I asked him to try putting his penis inside me—
but we couldn’t quite figure that out.

Then I found the Adam & Eve catalog.

The picture in the back of it is burned into my memory:
she was gorgeous—black hair, pale skin,
a black leather corset that didn’t cover her ample breasts—
and the largest cock I had ever seen.

It was an ad for a phone sex line.

“Come talk to chicks with dicks,” it said.

I didn’t know that was a thing.
I was enthralled.

“I like the trannys too,” Derek said to me once.

I didn’t quite know what I was feeling at the time—
just that I had discovered something that felt taboo,
unreal, and magnetic.

“Why?” I asked him.

“I imagine it’d be amazing to fuck someone with tits
who was always horny.
Because surely, to be a tranny meant you were always horny.”

Oh, the naivety of youth.