Seminal summer The first time I saw a penis BY CAMILLE DODERO

THE FIRST time I saw a penis was during the summer. I was five when I spotted one at a Cape Cod beach, creeping out from the wide leg of a sleeping sunbather’s drawstring shorts. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the fleshy thing, lying there like a pregnant slug. My mom had just recently explained to me how babies were made, and it puzzled me how that shriveled gastropod could be the seed of all human life. It looked like something you’d kill with a stick.

But the stranger’s appendage hypnotized me. I’m not talking any sort of adult arousal here, just the childlike curiosity that keeps five-year-olds sneaking peeks at the saggy-breasted African women in their next-door neighbor’s coffee-table copy of National Geographic. (Or maybe that was just me?) I spent the day contriving excuses to walk by the dozing man and the mysterious object protruding from his shorts. I found an endless supply of items to throw in the rusty green trash can beside his blanket: sandwich bags, papers, rocks. I found reasons to take otherwise pointless walks: "I think I see my friend from school down there!" I continually needed to fill my pail with seawater to solidify a sand sculpture that was, as the day waned, looking more and more like a giant dick.

Finally, my mom became suspicious. Mouth full of a salami-and-cheese sandwich, she demanded, "What are you doing?"

"Looking for a ball," I said.

It wasn’t exactly a fib.

Later that summer, I got my second look at male genitalia. This one wasn’t attached to a stranger: it belonged to my twentysomething brother. One Saturday afternoon while he was babysitting me, I accidentally walked in on him reading a magazine in the tub. My brother was infamous for marathon baths (in retrospect, I understand why a young man still living at home spent so much time in the shower); I was annoyed that he’d disappeared for so long. I barged into the bathroom and discovered a part of my brother I’d never before seen: a pinkish blob floating between his legs in the soapy water. Eureka! This time, I wasn’t overwhelmed with insatiable curiosity, but with the mischievous-younger-sister impulse of A-ha! I caught you!, followed by the utter repulsion of seeing my older brother naked. I ran away screaming.

Nevertheless, those organs stuck in my head and came out with my crayons. That summer, I scribbled a messy picture of a whiskered cat with a giant schlong. I still remember the image distinctly: the kitty’s U-shaped appendage looked like an enormous ribbed worm, Saturn-like rings encircling four or five points in its midsection, the whole apparatus inches longer than the cat’s stubby legs. Apparently I wasn’t trying to keep the pornographic sketch a secret, because I showed it to my brother (Freud would have a field day with that one). He ratted me out to our mom, divulging that I’d drawn something "dirty." I wouldn’t show her the picture, so she chased me around the house. When she finally caught up with me and saw what I’d sketched, she informed me that from then on I was allowed to draw only "animals wearing clothes."

But animal clothes couldn’t protect me from reality’s rawness. I saw my third penis a few weeks later. I was at McDonald’s, eating a Happy Meal with my mom. Sitting across the room from us, in an orange plastic booth, was a sketchy guy with faded denim cut-offs. I can’t remember his face, but it must’ve been ugly — I still get a little queasy trying to recall what he looked like. What I do remember is the way the stringy jean fabric, like a kind of shaggy curtain, framed that thing jutting out from his shorts. Once again, I couldn’t stop staring — in the same way you can’t keep your eyes off a goiter.

When I finally went to kindergarten, I’d started to think it was quite natural that boys would want to flash their penises at girls. For the first few months of school, I had a line I used on more than one boy I thought was cute: Meet me under the snack table.

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com