After about twenty minutes the box was empty, the living room a mess. I fetched a scale from the bathroom and we began weighing the porn one small stack at a time until we came up with our less-than-scientific total. Once that was over we did what any normal kids would do: We started making rules. We weren't stupid. We'd all read Lord of the Flies and knew that without imposing order we risked descending into primal, porn-fueled anarchy.

Our guidelines were simple — you could check out five magazines at a time for up to three weeks. (Five magazines was the maximum number you could smuggle down the front of your pants without drawing too much attention to yourself. As it was, it still must've looked pretty weird seeing a couple of kids stiffly goose-stepping through the neighborhood every few weeks.) There was to be no tearing out of pages or getting you-know-what on them, and most importantly, there was to be no talking about the library.

The rules settled on, we each chose our first five titles and went our separate ways, ushering in the long, hot summer of self-abuse. I'd like to tell you that in the ensuing months I realized how pornography had little, if anything, to do with real women and that objectifying them wasn't even sexy. I'd like to tell you that — but I can't, because I was too busy beating-off like a little monkey. Those revelations wouldn't come until later.

That's not to say the box didn't have educational value. Right off the bat I learned that a paper cut on the penis wasn't fatal. Playboy Bunnies were turned off by rude people, but not James Caan's hairy back. Pete Rose hated it when chicks licked his nipples, but not much more. If the Wallys were getting anything else out of it, they weren't talking. I was left to probe the mysteries of womankind on my own. When I wasn't launching another surprise attack on my beleaguered member, I was scanning articles, interviews and advertisements trying to glean any insight I could as to what made women tick.

Unfortunately the porn raised far more questions than it answered. Were women genuinely turned on by round beds and Burt Reynolds mustaches? Would a designer cologne or component stereo system really make them horny?

Was it essential for a man to have a huge penis, and if so, was there still time to grow one?

Was it essential for a man to have a huge penis, and if so, was there still time to grow one? None of these or countless other questions were ever answered to my satisfaction, and all things considered, it's a small miracle that I didn't return to school that fall as an eighth-grade Bob Guccione — zodiac pendant dangling from my neck, shirt open to the waist, crotch full of padding and reeking of High Karate.

For their part, the Wallys appeared unchanged as well, with the notable exception that they had all but abandoned their afternoon naps and the impromptu beatings had dramatically tapered-off. With their volcanic aggression now safely re-channeled, the brothers began the long, slow journey toward becoming productive, non-psychotic members of society — a living testament to the healing power of onanism.

Yet whether we knew it or not, we were changing. High school arrived and with it came a host of new problems. While my body continued developing in all the wrong ways, I watched, petrified, as the girls around me turned into young women, becoming even less approachable in the process.

When Wally Sr. became the first one of us to get a girlfriend (she said she liked his firm face, whatever that meant), the porn became nothing more than a liability — a constant, nagging reminder of my physical and emotional shortcomings. How could I expect the girl at the next desk to take me seriously when I'd been hunched over a copy of Dildo Debbies the night before? The Wallys didn't object when I suggested that we release the porn back into the wild. Their own trips to the library had become less frequent, and with Wally Sr. now attached, an awkward new dynamic had been introduced. Somehow having three members was okay, but two was kind of creepy.

We scouted locations and one day found ourselves in a densely overgrown space between two houses. There we left the porn. Tempted though we were to say a prayer, last words — something — we left in silence.

We didn't look back.  n°