The relationship between a man and his private parts is never serene; there are always elements of intrigue, mystery, and open conflict in the mix. For years, of course, having a penis is an absolute convenience. You get nine, ten, eleven great years of simple and efficient water work out of the thing, and the lesson it has for boys is clear: Point that thing out there. It does not engender introspection, inspection, circumspection, or any other form of spection. That’s what is necessary to know about the way men are trained: They are not practiced in second thinking. You’re ten years old, hiding in a bush during a twilight game of tag, and you have to piss, so you unzip there quietly as the kid who is it approaches. Get it over with, because you’re going to have to run for your life in ten seconds. It’s what you do.

Then it starts to get unnerving. In the spring of sixth grade, the girls at Edison Elementary are all called into the auditorium to see a film with their mothers. The boys are kept in Mr. Durrant’s room and not told one word about the whole deal, except it’s clear from the looks on everyone’s faces that the world as we know it is coming to an end. And we boys know it well, have mastered this world–in fact, we like it, love it, really, and it is over. They are complicating it. Nothing will ever be the same. This moment is the moment that will give all future conspiracy theories a chance. Something’s going on.
Mr. Durrant sits with the sixth-grade boys in his classroom. We have a talk in which he deflects all our questions with phrases full of “hygiene” and “maturity.” He throws around a few mystery words, among them genitals. I sit there in the blond afternoon light of Mr. Durrant’s classroom and wait for the bell to ring.

At the corner of Concord Street after school, Marvin Hilbar stops me. “Hey, Ronnie,” he says. “What’s going on?” I tell him I don’t know. Behind him I can see all the girls and their mothers drifting out of the school in pairs toward their cars. They all look down, serious and brave, as if burdened with some new grief. They walk away as if from a state funeral.

Marvin Hilbar’s face has a look I’ve never seen before, the kind of worry that will engender and fill volumes of self-help books for the next forty years, and he says, “I heard Mr. Durrant say ‘genitals.’ How many you got? Because I just got the one.” And for a real minute there, on a corner that is as real a place for me as any in my memory, I, too, feel the little twinge of worry. It hadn’t hit me sooner because I was in denial. We are at that place where we cross over, and now it will be other people giving our bodies words. Genitals ? Get out of my way. We don’t want any. We want to be boys.
Childhood ends on that corner. It was a garden, lush and carefree, and then the girls see a movie and we’re all asked to pack up and get out.