George Winston

When my mom and I first moved there, and I was just seven, I used to come down to the Dance Building with her on Saturdays while she taught. I’d sit in the studio and watch class for a while, and then I’d wander around through the building, peeking into the girl’s dressing room, sneaking into the sewing room and walking slowly through the narrow aisles of costumes, the silks and cottons and scratchy tutu fabrics brushing against my face. And then I’d go outside and play on the shore, obeying my promise of never straying too far away. Interlochen was a safe place, but you couldn’t be too careful, and I always kept the Dance Building close to my back, never going out of earshot of the muffled piano and the creaks of the old wooden building, gently protesting against the jumping dancers within.

One day, I was playing in the rocks of the shore, when I noticed a log that had washed up on the shore. I scrambled over the rocks to investigate it. It was short, but thick, and looked like it had escaped from a woodpile, determined not be ignominiously incinerated for somebody else’s warmth. All over the surface there were, what must have been in retrospect, wormholes. But to me and my fertile imagination, they were exotic carvings, mysterious and pregnant with meaning. They appeared to have been carved deliberately, the short curving lines were clearly some sort of code, some mystifying language, ancient and significant. I tried to pull the log out of the water but it was too heavy and slippery for me to lift. I walked around it and tried again, my shoes soaking up the cold water. I grunted and struggled, and I could turn it over, but I could not lift it. I didn’t want to tell anybody else about it, knowing they would take it from me. It was mine and I was determined to take it home and lay claim to this remarkable artifact. But it was too heavy, and, after half-an-hour of struggling, I gave up, and went back inside the Dance Building and waited for class to be over so my mom and I could go home.

The following weekend, I came back down to the shore, and it was still there, beckoning, taunting. I slid down the short bank into the shallow water and tried again. I could move it and tilt in slightly, but then I’d lose my grip on the slippery surface and the log would splash back into the lake, soaking me. I ran my fingers over the carvings, wondering what they meant. I tried again, and again I failed. I could’ve asked one of the students or faculty to help me, but I somehow sensed that doing so would break the illusion. They’d be able to lift it out for me, but they’d also have some logical and mundane explanation for those mysterious carvings, and the magic would evaporate. So I struggled mightily against it, grunting and puffing, but time and again, just as I started to lift it, it would slip from my grasp and splash back into the shallow water. Frustrated, I had to admit defeat, and dejectedly went back inside.

The next weekend, I wandered back down to the water’s edge, hoping the log would still be there, and hoping it had disappeared. Standing at the top of the bank, I could see it there, still nestled against the rocks, its carvings glistening in the sun, the gentle waves lapping softly against the side, making it rock a little. I was just about to go down the bank and try again when I heard a voice behind me.

I turned around and saw a boy, probably fifteen or sixteen, standing a little ways down the beach, in front of the blank brick wall of an unused practice building. He beckoned me over, and I turned from the log and came over to where he was standing. He motioned me closer, and stepped into the shrubbery that flanked the low, windowless building. Puzzled, I followed him in.

He told me that he would show me his if I showed him mine. I had played this game in nursery school with Allison, but never with another boy. It felt sort of pointless, but he seemed eager to play, so I unzipped my pants and pulled my underwear down, showing him my little boy penis. Then it was his turn, and he unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. It was long and thick and hard, the skin smooth and insistent. I had never seen anything like it. He asked me if I wanted to touch it. I hesitated. “Go ahead,” he urged, so I reached my hand out and grasped his shaft gingerly. It leapt a little in my hand, and I was surprised at how hot and hard it felt, like a smooth rock warmed in the sun. He asked me if I wanted to put it in my mouth, and I recoiled, letting go and stepping back. He pleaded and I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine either why I’d ever do that or why he’d even want me to, so I buttoned my pants and backed out of the bushes, leaving him there, and walking quickly back to the Dance Building, ignoring my mystic log in the lake and taking a seat on one of the benches inside, watching the dancers do their combinations across the floor, listening to my mother count out the beats against the wheezing piano, wondering what had just happened. I didn’t tell anybody about it, knowing that somehow I had done something wrong.

A couple of weeks later, I was walking further down the shore, in front of an abandoned boat house, when I ran into that boy again. He told me to come inside the boathouse with him, but I shook my head. He told me he had some pictures of naked women in his wallet, and he’d show them to me it I followed him inside. I had always had a weakness for pornography, boldly sneaking peaks at Playboys in drug stores from the time I was five, and so I followed him inside the musty building with its cracked tile floor and overturned boats, covered in tarps, hibernating. He took his wallet out and showed me a couple of small pictures of men and women doing strange things I didn’t understand. They were naked, so I knew it must be sex, but it didn’t look anything like the solitary, airbrushed women I had seen in Playboys. He asked me if I liked them. I shrugged. He asked me if I’d like to do those things. I shrugged. Then he turned me around, pulled my pants and underwear down, bent me over one of the sleeping boats and fucked me up the ass. It hurt, but I was too scared to really register the pain and, after a couple of minutes, I felt something warm and sticky on my back, and he pulled up his pants and jumped out the window, leaving me disheveled and confused, my pants around my ankles.

I slowly pulled them up and walked shakily back home. I didn’t want to tell anybody about it, but I was afraid that I was going to get pregnant, so, a couple of days later, I fearfully confessed it to my mother, who, with shaking hands and flushed face, assured I wouldn’t get pregnant and that what had happened was in no way my fault.

And that was it. It was never discussed again and the incident dropped like a stone in the deep well of my psyche. I don’t know what happened to that boy, but I was never the same after that. I had seen the power of unbridled desire, and I never wanted to subject anybody to that. As I grew into puberty, I subverted my lust at every opportunity, afraid to hurt somebody with it, afraid it would run rampant if left unchecked. I had a penis, there was no denying that, but I never wanted a cock. I never wanted to make anybody feel the way I felt that day, scared and sore and alone on the cold tile floor. And, although I had been assured that it wasn’t my fault, I had followed him into the boathouse willingly. My sexual curiosity betrayed and led me into danger. It was a lesson I’d never forget.

Fuck comes, etymologically, from the Dutch word fokken, to thrust, or the Swedish dialectical fukka, which means to strike. It is a violent word for a violent act, and, as strong as my desires would run in later years, I couldn’t bring myself to fuck. I loved Tina, but I couldn’t fukka her. I wanted Jennifer and Lisa and Michelle, but I couldn’t prove it to them. I burned with a deep, smoldering flame for years, a fire that would instantly extinguish itself when revealed. I wanted affection, I wanted physical intimacy, but I wanted to be held gently, caressed softly. My cock had been cut off and thrown in the lake that day, leaving me with my little boy penis. And there it would stay, like that mysterious log, ineffable, unfathomable, significant, inscrutable. Too slippery to hold. Too heavy to lift. Try as I might, struggle as I may, I could not pull it from those shallow waters and take it home. It wasn’t mine to have, and, reluctantly, I left it there and walked slowly down the silent path, my hands buried deep in empty pockets, to the lonely dark house at the edge of the woods.