I remember mine, and it’s a most strange story for a gay man.
I am old enough that I grew up before the internet, and I was raised in a working class Catholic family so there was absolutely no talk about our bodies or sex. None. I literally had no idea what a penis was even for. We knew “fuck” was a curse but didn’t know its meaning.
I had three female cousins, aged 9, 11 and 15. They were over our house all the time, visiting. I was 10.
One time the 11 year old asked to see my penis. I said no because my mother had told me I always needed to keep it covered because I peed with it. But my cousin insisted and cajoled me. It turns out my 15 year old cousin told her younger siblings all about her experience seeing and touching a boy’s penis, how she has rubbed it and something amazing had happened. This seems to have really lit a fire in my younger cousins and they seemed to view me as a safe test subject to explore this phenomenon further.
I relented and in my bedroom I revealed my small flaccid penis. They were amazed and after a few moments of looking began to touch it. I felt quite startling sensation, and the three of us were all amazed when I quickly became erect. I mean, I must have had erections before, but if so, had no idea whatsoever what it meant. (I think back on that time in my life and laugh at my profound lack of bodily awareness.)
Once I became erect, the sensation of the rubbing took on an increased intensity — an odd feeling I had never had before (I have never had nocturnal emissions so had never had an orgasm.) I began to react to the rubbing, and my cousins noticed my squirming and giggled. Always a bit of a devil, my younger cousin cupped the upper part of my dick in her two hands and began rubbing them back and forth, like you do when you’re warming your hands, and she was closely watching my reaction with a smile on her face. This hit me like a tidal wave and brought me into COMPLETELY uncharted waters of feeling. She kept doing it and the EXPLOSION of sensation kept building, and I felt like I was going to fly clean out of my skin. I panicked and pulled my penis away and said, ok let’s stop. They seemed disappointed because the thing my oldest cousin had told them about didn’t happen, but seemed on the verge of it.
I certainly remembered that experience, and the next time I got an erection, when I saw a shirtless actor in the brand new magazine, People, I went into the bathroom and rubbed some of my sister’s thick strawberry shampoo on my penis and began stroking it. Soon I had that unbearable sensation again and stopped. It was the next time I did this that I forced myself to keep going, and even though I felt like my head was about to detonate like an atom bomb, finally had my first orgasm. Ii had never experienced anything that even came close to that.
Kind of ironic that I found out about all this from two girls — girls I was related to, at that. It’s odd that I got an erection, because I don’t get erections from women. I guess it was the physical stimulation.
Do you have a clear memory of the first erection you experienced and were aware of?