Sixteen-year-old Emma walked alone along the long stretch of beach, the sun warm against her skin. She had come to escape her family—her parents and younger brothers, with whom she was vacationing—and to find some peace. The beach was vast, people spread out enough that she felt a rare sense of solitude. That, combined with a growing curiosity inside her, emboldened her in a way she hadn’t expected. After a few moments of...

The following Thursday, Gina called me and asked me to go for a walk with her after school. I’d never spent time with her alone before, but it seemed like a simple request so I agreed to it. We met a couple of blocks from my house and she led the way. I was still dressed in my school blouse and skirt. Even though it was a mild day, I had panty-hose on, which I often found uncomfortable in such weather. However, I did have...

In the week following that problematic Circle Line tour, my attempt to play hard-to-get failed. Margery had easily seduced me – more than once – on the following Thursday. I knew I was folding under the pressure of her charms. As a seventeen-year-old guy, and not a particularly physically impressive one at that, I was getting more sexual stuff than I had ever imagined I’d have at that point in my life. I doubted that many...

I had to leave. I had to leave my old life, my home, my toxic environment. No one forced me to do it but my wanderlust. I needed a chance to be reborn, for my mental health; I could not handle this grey everyday life anymore. So I found a nice family in Iceland to work for. I packed up my stuff, jumped on a plane, and hoped for the best. I left the town I lived in my whole life, and I left behind my sex toys, the only thi...

In the spring of 1981, when I was nineteen, a woman named Miriam Roston moved into my building. At least I initially assumed that she was a woman. In New York, people generally were non-judgmental and left other people alone. But this was in the East Bronx, not Manhattan, and after about a month, my family started speculating about her. They used terms like “tranny” and “shemale” to describe her, although they didn’t exac...

I was having a hard time with the scene in that basement. Here was this nice high school girl in her strange state of undress, and I knew she was going to talk about some provocative topics. I had a sudden attack of prudishness. She seemed to understand what I was thinking. “You know, Hank, let me put my skirt back on. I get the feeling that the sight of my bare crotch is unnerving you a bit.” Odd, being half-dressed does...

Nature stirs as snows doeth melt,All kissed awake by suns' warmth -- felt,What swells unseen, in dark-held berth,To mimic well, this warming earth, A favored bud might yield to coax,This promised rise that we have spoke,What hints in seasons fresh anew,Might finally gleam within your view, By snows so white, flow trickling run,Before your sight make same by strum,Upon the night when melt stalls firm,Tis yours the same, fo...

“Wow, we really lucked out with this place,” said Vivian Hannity. She was talking about the apartment they had just rented on Sedgwick Avenue. Her new roommate, Miranda Grossman – or just Mandy – replied, “I’ll say, I especially like this view looking out at the reservoir. How about we celebrate by smoking a doobie?” “It’s a bit early in the day for that, isn’t it?” “Naw, you’re just fooled because of the time of the year...

Most of us of a certain age remember the 1989 teen romantic comedy, Say Anything. It’s actually an adult fantasy about how they wished teen life had been for them. Yet it struck a nerve with me when I saw it because of the early scenes with high school senior Lloyd Dobbler. At the opening of the film, he is utterly infatuated with his classmate Diane Court. Of course, it’s completely improbable how he keeps his interest i...

I thought I lost my virginity to a girl I met at Finley Hall, but afterwards I was never truly sure. I suppose it was a matter of definitions. It wasn’t really about the event itself, but rather the woman I was with. Finley Hall was the Student Center at the City College of New York by the 1970s. It was a huge, sprawling structure and I don’t remember now exactly what was contained in the whole place. It wasn’t being used...

My favorite uncle was my father’s younger brother, Henry D’Amato, or Uncle Hank as we called him. When I reached college age in the 1970s, he had a successful fruit wholesaling business in the Bronx Terminal Market. By then he had surpassed his own father, who had his store just down the block. Hank had two trucks and two “stores” or units, while my Grandpa Carmine only had one of each.During my school years he sometimes...