Five Ways of Knowing
The Body as a Teenager
by Nathan Long
Scientific
My mother explaining where babies come from, talking about an erection and a penis and vagina and sperm, all words I didn’t understand, though I nodded in the back seat of the car as my sister snickered.
The sixth-grade sex ed film Boy to Man, that talked about two brothers, the older who was going through changes, the younger “who’d be shooting a good number of baskets before he’s full grown.”
The film’s diagrams of a penis I could barely make sense of, explaining, “here is the male penis…it gets engorged with blood…during an ejaculation, sperm flow out the urethra…and here are their destination,,,the female body.”
Social
In the used school textbook I was issued someone had drawn a penis in pencil on the inside with the words “I want a big hairy dick.”
My friend Pat said his friend Paul had a big dick and I asked how he knew, and he said, “Well—how do I know? Well, I guess I’ve seen it when we’ve both been pissing.”
Seeing the foreign exchange student’s dick hanging out of his shorts as he rested on the sofa.
My father’s naked body coming out of the shower as I went in.
Going into the men’s room after a guy so I could glance at his penis as I peed.
Fantastic
Sitting in the dark sixth-grade classroom as the film started, a drawing of a beautiful boy, naked, sitting on a chair, his penis draped over the edge. I felt a wild excitement.
Spending recess with the blond boy with braces and dirty clothes, wanting to touch the veins on his hands.
Riding behind Brian Wilson on the bus, staring at the golden hairs on his neck, enthralled by his Adam’s apple as he passed by my window after getting off the bus.
Going into the bookstore at the mall and discovering the Playgirls, bending down and flipping through them, searching for the kind of man I was attracted to.
Moral
At a restaurant, my mother and brother exchanging glances and knowing looks, their eyes darting over at the two men next to us who were holding hands under their table.
My mother telling me it was okay to act and sing at home, pretending to be the effeminate man who played King Harrod in Jesus Christ Super Star, but “you know its not something you do in public.”
Sitting in the dark sixth grade classroom as the film started, fearing that everyone in that dark room could sense my excitement.
Flipping through the Playgirls, afraid my sister would walk by.
A boy in the high school bathroom seeing that I was looking saying “Faggot,” then zipping up and walking out.
My Body
Thinking at first I was probably the only one whose penis could get hard like it did.
Arm out the truck window, watching the wind blow back my t-shirt sleeve, revealing the thin new hairs.
Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, imagining kissing the boy in front of me until my lips touched glass.
Rocking on an innertube in the family pool late at night, the water rushing over my naked body until I felt, for the first time, those muscles tighten.
Laying in a bed in our unused cabin late at night, stoned, smelling the armpits of my t-shirt while humping the mattress, not thinking of anything—not even the boys at school or in magazines-- but only feeling pure sensation.
Nathan Alling Long's work appears in over 100 publications including Strange Tales, Hybrid Fiction, and several Queer Sci Fi anthologies. Their collection of fifty short stories, The Origin of Doubt, was a 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist. The recipient of a Truman Capote fellowship, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conference scholarships, and four Pushcart nominations, Nathan lives in Philadelphia.