Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,22

history from their first childhood stirrings. Harry makes a few notes and stores them carefully inside his wallet. This is where he decides to start with his advice to Michael.

When very young I was fascinated by the waterworks. I liked to pee outside and have my mother watch and remark on my skill. At the age of four or five I remember trotting off with a cousin of similar age to see a girl’s legs. I don’t remember the outcome, but there was certainly some early excitement at the prospect. Around this age I got considerable gratification from rubbing myself stomach-down along my aunty’s new carpet. The carpet had a floral pattern and I squirmed around from vine to vine. I remember my mother telling my aunty that I was having fun ‘playing with the dog’, I’ve never been sure if they were both aware of what I was up to. For the life of me I can’t remember if my aunty ever had a dog.

I had an early distrust, fear even, of public toilets and unfamiliar outhouses. I think this was due to the foreign smells. One of my mother’s friends saw me putting myself away after peeing in her garden. She said, ‘Better be careful with that. A bird might get it.’ I was ashamed and humiliated. I told my mother we had to leave immediately because I was sick.

Several years later the boy next door told me the basics of sexual relations between men and women. His explanation bored me – the whole apparatus seemed overly complex and technical. I dismissed it out of hand as being too ridiculous to be true.

Don’t recall age at first erection, but I do remember a distinct defensive or counter-erection from very young. The member shrank inside itself with tension and local discomfort due to physical distress or revulsion. Swimming in a cold dam, undressing in front of the school nurse, visiting the dentist, having to kiss old people … This settled once erection was achieved.

Not much early interest in girls. In grade one a very fat girl sat behind me and often had her legs open when I turned around. Her knickers were grubby. I formed the impression she had an extra stomach between her legs – something like the dumpy leather pouch of a train conductor. I thought it probably opened at the top, near the navel.

At the age of eight I was playing at the house of a school friend when we approached his younger sister and demanded to see her legs. We told her we needed to see if they were strong enough for her to be allowed to play our game. She refused, but agreed to let us watch her pee in exchange for a strap of licorice. I was gobsmacked at what I took to be the little mouth, the undeveloped beak, she peed with. I’m not sure what I expected, but I couldn’t have been more surprised.

First erection at age eight or nine and self-handling began at this time. By the age of ten or eleven I was eager to inspect the genitals of girls and women. On a seaside holiday I attempted to look between the skirts of girls while they were swimming by lugging a piece of driftwood under the sea and using it to anchor myself to the bottom. The current made it difficult and there was often a lot of seaweed in the water. I also pretended that my concentration was being taken up with building miniature sand tunnels along the tide line so I could look up at women and girls lying, sitting and standing on the beach above me and see what I most desired to see. These attempts were clearly quite feeble, but at the time they were utterly consuming. I remember trembling with anticipation as I set out for the beach each morning.

Night pollutions started around the same time as first emissions. I never had any sense that I was doing anything wrong. I’d say to any boy now that there is nothing wrong in an empty-out. It is best not to fret about it, just get on and get it done. When I was staying with my aunty she often commented on how bright I looked in the mornings – and it was always after an emptying the night before.

By thirteen I’d be hard at it before falling asleep and back for some hair of the dog immediately on waking. Around this time a boy