I was nine; the girl who lived in the house catty-corner to me was using me to obtain access to my stepfather’s rather large collection of pornographic magazines.

My parents were out; I was jumping on their bed while my friend eagerly flipped through a recent copy of Penthouse.

“Wow, lookit this one! Handcuffs!”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” I had seen them all several times and at this point found porn rather passe’. I was much more interested in teaching myself how to write in ancient Celtic runes and in mixing every non-toxic liquid in the house together, a game which my friend and I called “Mad Scientist”. Nothing mad or scientific ever happened, really. The only tangible result I can remember is my Mom finding one of my concoctions under the bathroom sink in a butter tub and going, “What the hell is this?” *sniffs* “Baby powder? And…shampoo?” *dirty look at me* “Gaaad, Asshole, no wonder we have to go to KMart once a week.”

My porno-perusing friend thought she was an expert on everything. Granted, she was the indisputed flip-flop and cart wheel expert on our block. She was the one who taught me how to roll up the cuffs of my jeans in that ohso cool late-80s, blood-constricting way. But there were areas in which her knowledge was lacking. After she ran out of magazines that had been added to the collection since the last time she came over, she was ready to fill me in on some facts she felt I needed to know.

“I know what sex is.”

“Yeah, so do I.” Mom had inflicted The Talk on me a few months prior when she noticed I was developing mosquito bumps. It came complete with a hand-drawn diagram of a woman’s uterus and accompanying accessories that I thought looked like a cow’s head. My friend went on, undaunted.

“It’s when a boy sticks his thingie into a girl’s body.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well do you know how girls get pregnant?” This part was kind of fuzzy… what had Mom said again?

“Ummm…I can’t remember.”

“Boys make girls pregnant by jumping up and down on them until they pee inside the girl’s thingie.”

Yah! That didn’t sound right. I told myself I was never going to do anything like that. I promised myself I would look it up after she left in our family’s medical encyclopedia.