I keenly remember the desperate yearnings of my teenage years. Hormones were flowing through my veins like a flooded creek after a spring storm, but I languished miserably in a sexual desert. Just looking at girls filled me with an insatiable desire which I could lower only by habitual masturbation, often five times a day. This practice kept me from going crazy but left me feeling unfulfilled, as there was no doubt in my...

I I reenlisted in the Army in 2006 after returning from my second deployment to Iraq. At twenty-two, I was a young but battle-hardened soldier who had earned a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, and a rapid promotion to Staff Sergeant in just four years of military service. It was already a certainty that I was going to be a lifer, a career Army man. I was very grateful to be stationed near Seattle as this would give me the...

In the summer of 1976, I was a painfully shy eighteen-year-old boy who had never kissed a girl. I couldn't even start a conversation with a girl without stuttering a bit from nervousness. I was a virgin with no prospects and even less hope. I thought about sex constantly, masturbating several times a day, but there seemed to be no chance that my fantasies might come to life. And what was worse was that in the fog of adole...