The Perverse Hilarity of Puberty
Illustration: Valerie Letts
I’ve been thinking about the perverse hilarity of my puberty… the bodily betrayal, the incoherent sex-ed received from other horny tweens, the feelings of homosexual depravity, the fun of it all! What a strange, tumultuous time that was. Without any real warning, my body began to confuse me in increasingly creative ways. My mind became my arch nemesis, each new thought more depraved than the last. In the thralls of puberty, I surely overestimated its catastrophe. I see that now. But it’s how I felt, and I suspect I’m not alone. Despite being deeply personal, puberty definitely has some universal, unifying characteristics. The whole thing is plagued by compulsive melodrama. It’s confusing and sort of horrifying, but most definitely exciting—and I haven’t met a person who doesn’t look back at their addled pubescent self and laugh with empathetic pity.
I was totally unprepared for puberty’s effects despite my comprehensive* education; while on a run, I received a vague “birds-and-the-bees” talk from my father, which lasted about forty-five seconds and was delivered in between heaving breaths. That was the moment that I learned that heterosexual intercourse doesn’t happen up the butt. How enlightening! In addition to that chat, my parents gave me Puberty for Dummies to read in the summer before sixth grade, since I’d skipped the fifth and consequently missed my first sex-ed curriculum. I never finished it. I remember sitting at the desk underneath my loft bed (I had recently hit a growth spurt and couldn't fit there without twisting my neck to a ninety-degree angle) and immediately flipping to the “Sex” chapter. The opening line read: “Some of you probably skipped directly to this section...”.
I shut the book. I did not like that my perverse curiosity had been anticipated. I did not like feeling so seen.
Ultimately, most of my sex-ed came from my peers… that being, equally confused boys whose birthday candles had only recently hit double digits. This entailed some ridiculous pedagogy; I was introduced to the female anatomy at recess by some (definitely fake) pictures of a topless Selena Gomez, displayed proudly on my friend’s iPod Touch. I learned about sexting when my ex-girlfriend's nudes were spread around our middle school by some twelve-year-old nascent sex offender. I found out about masturbation in the eighth grade (late, I know) and was promised that 3-5 wanks a day was the appropriate amount. A day. It was all very confusing, but of course it was! I was learning about sex from horny tweens, a famously unreliable source of information.
When my body began acting in ways I’d never consented, my confusion only worsened. I was so pissed. It was the ultimate betrayal! In school, a random erection would rear its ugly head (see what I did there?) and leave me unable to focus on anything else. I spent many a math class with my dick tucked into the waistband of my American Eagle underwear, convinced that classmates could sense my depravity. I was frustrated by these changes imposed on me, but especially irked by the changes not being performed despite my specific and persistent requests. Why was I not growing armpit hair? I think I actually prayed for some after a particularly devastating pool party. I’d completely lost control of my body.
Then there was the gayness of it all, which complicated everything further. Let me first note that I was the last person to find out that I was gay. There was ample evidence, which is how my classmates picked up on it…, but alas, I was not as perceptive. Thus, I found the accusations of homosexuality constantly levelled against me genuinely confusing and emotionally catastrophic. When my classmate approached my locker and earnestly asked, “You’re gay, right? Because Colin was telling me you’re a faggot,” I went home, and I cried. And when my mom, while consoling me, asked, “Well, are you? It’s okay if you are,” I cried even harder. I think I did, to some degree, know that I was, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been so devastated by those comments.
But I didn’t really know, and so all the pubescent issues I’ve mentioned thus far were shrouded in some additional difficulty I could not quite discern: The sex-ed I received from my peers felt somehow irrelevant. My sexual curiosities weren’t in line with my straight guy friends’. The topless pictures of Selena Gomez weren’t helping me understand the changes I was experiencing. My prayers for armpit hair were more urgent than most since it was the boy that I was in love with who I first noticed growing some. And my random erections felt especially perverted. I remember shopping at an outlet mall and being forced to retreat to the public bathroom after seeing a guy in particularly tight denim shorts. I wept in the stall, overwhelmed by the guilt over making that unassuming man the object of my desire. I felt like a sex pervert at eleven years old, which admittedly, is really funny. All these facets of puberty, already quite difficult and deluding, I found debilitating.
But puberty, in almost every case, is a success story. We eventually adjust to the unfamiliarity of our minds and bodies; we break through the confusion and clarify our situation. I don’t think that there is an “Aha!” moment where suddenly all is calmly understood, but at some point, we see that perverse hilarity as a thing of the past… or at least as something wrapping up. Everything became easier once I realized I was gay, which was ultimately prompted by one final comment by a classmate: I’d poured some pink electrolyte powder into my water bottle, to which my friend remarked, “Of course your water would be pink.” I don’t know why, but it was this tacit accusation that made me come home from school and sincerely ask myself that dreaded question of… “Am I Gay?” And then things got clearer. My realization led to a host of other problems, but understanding my pubescent experience was decidedly much easier.
I imagine that anyone reading this can also identify some elucidating moments during puberty—conversations with friends creating a sense of solidarity, revelations of the self-providing some much-needed clarity. And hopefully, with enough hindsight, you now feel a
strange sentimentality toward puberty. You can look back and laugh at how clueless you were, thankful to have grown but weirdly envying that naivety. If you haven’t reflected on your puberty, then I hope you do, at least for a good laugh. And then give yourself some credit, remembering… I SURVIVED PUBERTY’S TWISTED TORTURE TACTICS!
