"Honey, you need to have a talk with Paulie,” my wife said, holding up the bottom sheet from our son’s bed. There were a series of large yellowish brown stains towards the center of the sheet, at least one for each night since it had last been washed.

“Okay,” I answered, “I guess you’re right.” Paulie had just turned thirteen and his upper lip now bore a shadowy smudge and his voice had noticeable changed, as had his attitude. A few months ago he would rush into the bathroom while I was shaving or bathing and drop his pants and pee into the bowl unashamed of his hairless body and insignificant genitals and unconcerned about who might be watching. Now he always made sure that the bathroom door was locked and he also insisted that his mother or I knock before entering his bedroom.

Wednesday evening my wife was off shopping and Paulie and his best bud Logan were playing video games in the basement. Logan and his three sisters lived with their mother and there was no man in the household, so Logan spent a lot of time at our house. I preferred that our little talk just be between my son and me, but Logan was already there and he probably needed to hear what I had to say too.

“Hey guys, shut it off for a few minutes, okay?” I said, pulling up a chair to face the couch on which they were sitting. The boys gave me a dirty look, and then reluctantly hit the stop button and laid down their controllers.

“Okay. So, what’s up?” Paulie asked, knowing better than to openly sass me.

“You’re not little kids anymore,” I began, “That’s not to say that you’re actually men, but you’re getting there.” The boys gave me a blank stare, and then looked at each other the same way. “Your bodies have matured to the point that you’re physically capable of reproduction. You know how that stuff works, right?” Sex Ed is taught starting in the Sixth grade if the parents sign permission slips to allow their kids to take the classes. We had done so and I knew that he was aware of the biological process of reproduction and the risks connected with promiscuous sex, which put him a long ways ahead of where I’d been at that age. I didn’t know if Logan’s mom had signed off on the class or not, but I was reasonably sure that the two boys had compared notes anyway.

“Yeah, so, what?” Paulie finally managed to ask.

“In a few years you’ll start courting and have a really good use for your semen. In the meantime you need to be a little more careful about where you put it.” I had rehearsed that line, but was still a little uncomfortable with it. The boys were too, and they both blushed bright red when they figured out what I was getting at. “Look. I’m not saying don’t do it. We all know that you have to get rid of the stuff now and then. I’m just saying be a little careful about leaving stains in your sheets and underwear. Take some Kleenex or some paper towels to bed with you and then throw them in the trash the next morning, Okay?”

That took care of the easy half of my sermon; the other part would be a little tougher, because I had a dilemma. Dad’s older brother never married and was never serious about any girl. He wasn’t flamboyant and he never came out of the closet, but he was obviously gay. He died a lonely old man shunned by the rest of the family. I saw some of those same traits in Paulie, and at that time I felt that he was teetering on the edge and could go either way, and although there was still lots of time for him to come around and start liking girls, I wanted him to know that an alternative lifestyle was to some degree acceptable. I preferred that he marry and have kids, but I rather see him enter a gay relationship than grow old alone and unloved.

“Guys your age aren’t allowed to get, ah, intimate with girls, if you know what I mean. You’re capable enough, but if you even try to get a girl’s pants off someone will stomp you right into the ground. If her daddy doesn’t, someone else will.” Meaning me, of course. “Guys like you have to satisfy themselves for a few years, and I know you know what I mean. Some guys also take a little satisfaction in other guys. You know, watching each other, and maybe lending a hand now and then.” Their scarlet faces and unmistakable body language told me that they knew just exactly what I was talking about. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” I reassured them, “it’s just part of growing up. In fact a lot of young guys take it a little farther and get really, really intimate with each other. Intimate the way older guys and adults do with girls.” I wasn’t planning on describing oral and anal sex to them; Paulie was bright enough to figure that out for himself, and if Logan didn’t catch my drift Paulie would explain it to him afterwards. Their body language now spoke of wonder instead of guilt. They hadn’t been that far. Yet. “I don’t go for that kind of stuff myself,” I said, “but I don’t object to other people trying it as long as they keep an open mind about girls later on.”

The next time I had a chance to really talk to my son was Labor Day weekend, right before school started. I had driven Paulie and the ever-present Logan to the State Fair, all three of us sharing the wide front seat of my old pick-up truck. Their subtle body language told me that they were now more than just buddies. I got them unplugged from their I-pods and then delivered my missal. “Sometimes guys who really like each other, physically, I mean, make commitments, almost like married or engaged couples do.” Red faces and nervous fidgeting instead of innocent befuddlement revealed that they understood.

“What kind of commitments?” My son asked hesitantly.

“Well, you guys are too young for commitments now and you’ll probably both get married by the time you’re twenty two or twenty three, so it won’t matter anyway. But, most, ah, couples have one guy that’s dominant and one that’s submissive.” I wasn’t going to tell them about Tops and Bottoms; they’d have to figure that out on their own.

“Yeah?” Logan asked. I figured that he was the bitch; Paulie had always been a take-charge type of kid.

“Yeah, you know how hairy guys get? I mean, down below. Well, there’s nothing worse than getting hair in your mouth, you know?” I looked over at my son’s fuzzy tanned legs and imagined Logan’s head between his naked thighs, tongue extended. I hadn’t seen my son naked since he’d entered puberty but I supposed that he was a chip off the old block. “Anyway, if a guy really respects another guy he’ll be willing to make a small sacrifice and shave down there to make things more pleasant.” I figured that would be the end of their homosexual experimentation. These kids would be entering the eighth grade in a couple of days, where a guy’s pubes are not only a status symbol but proof that he is no longer an insignificant child, and there was no way on Hell that a normal kid would willingly surrender them. I had enough experience with kids to know that banning an activity was like throwing gasoline on a fire, and the best way to cool off a bad relationship was to let it burn itself out, and I figured that his little foray into homosexuality was going to come to a quick end.

The bathroom sink drain was plugged the next day. The trap was full of fine, curly hairs. Black. Paulie’s color as opposed to blonde Logan. My suspicions were confirmed; not only was my son in a gay relationship, he was damned serious about it. I hoped that he’d left enough hair to preserve his dignity when he stripped for PE, and I prayed that he was the dominant partner and that Logan was the bitch.

The boys, if possible, became even closer over the next few months, and as far as I could see they didn’t have any friends but each other. Even girls, who would normally cream themselves over good-looking kids like Paulie and Logan, shunned them. I even saw a couple of girls pointing at them and giggling in derision as I waited for them at the mall. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my son had come home bruised and bloody from some schoolyard challenge to his masculinity but it never happened. I was terrified that I’d used the wrong approach, and that he’d misinterpreted my tolerance of an alternative lifestyle for an endorsement for homosexuality.

Finally, Logan approached me one day. “I’d like to talk to you, Mr. G?” he said, using the typical teenage syntax that makes every statement sound like a question.

“Hi Logan. What’s up?”

“Uh, you, uh, told us about uh, commitments?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“ What kind of commitment can a guy who is, uh, submissive make to show that he really is, uh, committed?”

“Well,” I answered after thinking a minute, “You’re too young, of course, but sometimes guys who are really committed to being submissive and don’t want their partners to, shall we say, seek other partners do something extreme to show their affection.”

“What do they do?” He asked, as if desperate to please my son.

“They modify their bodies in such a way to keep them from getting all hairy and muscular and coarse.”

“How do they do that?”

“They ask someone, like their father or a doctor or an adult that they really trust to neuter them.”

“What’s neuter mean?” He was still clueless.

“They have their testicles, you know, balls, removed. It’s also called castration. It doesn’t hurt if it’s done right, and if they’re always going to be submissive they won’t need them anyway. It’s the ultimate way to express your love and respect for a partner. But it’s also a big step and something that a guy shouldn’t just rush into, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He was squirming a little now, as if trying to imagine someone other than my son messing with his nuts. “Thanks a lot, Mr. G.”

“You’re like a son to me Logan, and I’ll always be here for you,” I said patting the boy on the back. Nut the little bastard, I thought, and then inform Paulie that the same thing would happen to him some day. That ought to bring him around.

I must say that I had high hopes that before too long I’d have his smoothly shaved little nutsack in one hand and a knife in the other but it didn’t work out that way. I was ready willing and able to castrate him, but instead of approaching me to help him out, he did it to himself. He visited an uncle who had a dairy farm, and while there he watched his uncle band some bull calves. Getting castrated didn’t seem to bother the calves much, so Logan pilfered the elastrator and put one of the little rubber bands around his own ballsack before handcuffing himself to a tree in woods behind his house.

“Damn! That must have hurt!” I told my son. “I tied a string around my balls one time when I was about your age, just kind of screwing around, and it hurt like hell after just a few minutes.” Logan was still in the hospital. The surgeons had finished what he had started, and he was receiving IV antibiotics to fight off a nasty infection that set in. “Why do you suppose he did such a stupid thing, anyway?”

“Uh, I dunno,” Paulie stammered, obviously embarrassed by what he assumed that I already knew.

“Well anyway, it looks like you’re going to have to get a new, ah, special friend,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Guys who have been neutered don’t have any desire for or interest in any kind of sex,” I said, trying to sound as if I knew what I was talking about. “All their sex drive goes away with their balls.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” he said nervously, as if trying to imagine life without his balls, totally devoid of sex.

“Another couple of things,” I said, as he was about to leave.

“Huh?”

“Sally Roberts asked about you the other day. She said that she sure wished that you’d come out the lake and go water skiing with her, but your mother and I don’t like her. She wears too much make up and her clothes are too tight: she’s the kind of girl that gets guys in trouble, and we don’t want you to have anything to do with her. Also, we’re going to Seattle Friday, so you’re going to have to fend for yourself this weekend, okay?”