Forty-some years ago when I was thirteen and starting the eighth grade the class consisted of sixteen girls, ten Boys, and eight Men. All but three of the Men had been Boys last year, and all but two of the Boys would be Men by the end of the school year. I had sprouted pit and crotch hair during the summer and was therefore a Man and was entitled to sit with the other Men at their lunch table. We Men lorded it over the Boys and luxuriated in the downy curls that adorned our crotches, and we paraded around the locker and shower rooms bare assed and with pelvises thrust forward, proudly displaying our assets for all to see.

Later on, in high school, a guy’s studliness would be determined by the size of his erection or his real or alleged sexual prowess, but I can’t remember being aware of any differences in flaccid size back then, and displaying one’s boner was unthinkable. Doing so would have been an admission that the guy was intimate with the filthy, perverted, and unhealthy practice of masturbation, which was a cross we all had to bear in private back in those unenlightened dark ages.

The year passed quickly and most of the guys looked forward to the arrival of the last day of school, but not me. Dad had taken a job in Spokane and we would be moving as soon as school was out. I’d gone to school with most of these guys since the first grade and wasn’t too hot about moving to the city and starting high school where I wouldn’t know anyone. As bad as I felt I knew I was lucky in one way: Two of my classmates were still prepubescent, hairless children with insignificant genitals who would have to strip down and take PE with the macho fourteen year old Men. Poor kids.

Dad bought a house near the shop where he worked, and I spent the first few days roaming around the neighborhood checking out my new environment. I met a few kids my age and learned that I would be going to Wilson High School, so I wandered over there the next day to take a look. The place looked huge and I thought it must accommodate five or six hundred kids. There was a large recreation area on the school grounds with several basketball and tennis courts, and a Dairy Queen right across the street. Even in the summer there were quite a few kids hanging around. The front door of the school was open so I went in and found the office and announced that I was new in town and would be a freshman next fall. They put me on their mailing list and told me that freshmen registration and orientation would be late in August and that they’d send and get my transcript from my last school.

I made a few friends during the summer and also got up enough nerve to talk to a few of the girls I met but not enough to ask them out on dates or anything. I eventually became aware of a group of older guys that laid claim to a brushy ravine behind the Safeway parking lot. They were all sixteen or seventeen years old, and were usually smoking. They looked and acted tough and I’d been advised to steer clear of them but the shortcut from my house to the school and recreation area ran right through the middle of their turf, making contact inevitable.

“Hey, Fuzznuts!” One of them called out to me one day. “Get your ass over here!” I pretended not to hear and without even looking their way beat feet and got out of there and into the crowded parking lot. Once safe I chanced a look back and saw one of them flipping me the bird. I took the long way home and made a point of avoiding their little kingdom.

August came and I went to the freshmen orientation, toured the school, and received a locker assignment and my class schedule. I also learned that there wasn’t any school bus service for my neighborhood and I’d have to either walk to school every day or get a ride. That was okay; it was less than a mile, using the shortcut, and I could easily walk it in less than a half hour. I had an old bicycle but that wasn’t considered cool for a high school kid back then. The older guys that had hassled me in the ravine were arriving to register just as I was leaving. They gave me a few hard stares and dirty looks but didn’t act like they wanted to pound on me or anything. I still didn’t trust them and took the long way home, which added a mile to my walk but let me avoid their ravine.

A lot of kids hated the idea of going back to school but by the time Labor Day rolled around I was really stoked. An older brother had pumped me up on all the fun he’d had in high school, and I was looking forward to some new privileges, such as dating, that I would now be entitled to. Also, I still didn’t know many people in my new town and I was looking forward to the opportunities that school would bring to improve my social situation.

I walked over to the Dairy Queen on Labor Day, just kind of messing around and checking things out. I lost track of the time and it was getting close to dark by the time I left, and needing to get home I risked the short cut through the ravine. I smelled cigarette smoke and stopped and then turned to run but before they were on me before I took one step. Six of them, all smoking.

“Hey, Asshole,” one said, menacingly. He had large yellow buckteeth; the kind that we used to say could strip corn from the cob through a picket fence. Today, unarmed sixteen-year-old kids look so harmless that it’s hard to believe I was once afraid of them. “We tell you to stop, then you stop. Got it?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I said. I could have easily out ran them and as soon as I got a chance that’s what I was planning on doing, but for now I just wanted to keep them from pounding on me.

“Yeah, well, you owe us.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Yeah. See, this is our trail through here, and we charge like a toll, you know? Fifty cents a trip. I figure you owe us about five bucks total. Fork it over.”

I didn’t owe them shit and they knew it. They were just trying to shake me down. “I don’t have five dollars!” I replied. I a few cents change in my pocket and that was all. I didn’t even pack a wallet back then.

“Okay, then you’ll just have pay another way,” Buckteeth announced. “Strip your clothes off.” No fucking way was I going to do that! I knew about getting pantsed, where they strip you and take your clothes, leaving you to find your way home naked, and I wasn’t about to cooperate. “Help him, guys.”

I fought, but the six to one odds made it futile and in a few minutes time I was pinned to the ground, naked, by four of them while the other two went through my pants pockets. “Get the water.” Buckteeth told his lackey. “Three cups ought to do it.” Still pinned to the ground, I watched the smallest of the guys rummage around the litter and extract three large paper soft drink cups and trot fill them with the warm, brackish water that had collected in the bottom of the ravine. I didn’t have a clue what they were planning on doing with the water, but I knew that everyone that went through there probably pissed in the large puddle and I hoped like hell they weren’t expecting me to drink it.

The sun was almost down by now, but it was still light enough to see the leader take a safety razor from his back pocket. “Pour some on him,” he commanded the water boy, and I soon felt a warm trickle hit my belly and cock. “That’s enough for now. Okay, hold him steady. I wouldn’t want to slip.” Then I felt the scrape of the razor as it slid from just below my navel to my cock. Two more passes on each side and he turned to the inside of my thighs, then I finally felt his cold hand circle may balls as he tugged them tight to scrape around them and the base of my cock as well. More water was poured over my legs, and after finishing there he made a couple of swiped through my armpits. “Next time bring money,” Buck Teeth said, swirling the razor around in the remnants of the water, “or else I’ll use a straight razor. That could get a little dangerous, if you know what I mean.”

It was dark by the time I collected my clothes and got dressed, and I skipped the supper Dad had left on the stove for me and went right to my bedroom and stripped down in front of the mirror. Other than one solitary hair they missed I was hairless as a baby and looked like an eleven year old with big balls. My cock, which was usually someone tumescent, was as shriveled as if I had just taken a cold shower. How could I ever strip down for PE in front of a bunch of other guys? How long would it take to grow back? Maybe I could fake some kind of injury and not take PE for a couple of months. No. I’d have to go to a doctor and I’d have to strip for him anyway. Shit! I didn’t know what to do. I experimented with strategic placement of my hands and finally found a position in which I could cover everything except for my balls. That would have to do. No way could I duck school waiting for my hair to grow back.

My whole body tingled and itched the next morning. PE was my second class and I had to steel myself to go to the locker room. The teacher gave us a lecture on rules and policy, then we were issued our shorts, shirts, jock straps, and socks and told to dress down. I shed my shirt first, donned the oversized gym shirt I’d been issued and pulled it down as far as possible over my crotch before shedding my pants and quickly donning the jock strap. Only then did I turn away from the wall I’d been facing and look around at the other guys. There were about thirty boys in the room, all freshmen like myself, or obviously more mature sophomores. Some were flamboyantly displaying their assets, and some were modestly shy, but all had at least some body hair except for one diminutive prepubescent boy and me. Buckteeth and his cronies were not in the class. I would have recognized them in an instant.

The teacher herded us out onto the field for a round of calisthenics and then a couple of laps around the track completed the abbreviated first day of class. Back in the locker room I stripped, positioned my hands carefully over my crotch, and hurried into the steamy shower room hoping to avoid attention. I dressed facing the wall, combed my hair, and then went into the lavatory to take a dump.

“Did you see that one freshman?” Judging by his deeper voice, the guy that had just stepped up to the urinal next to the toilet stall was probably a sophomore.

“You mean the tall skinny kid with no hair?” His unseen companion asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Lenny and his bunch must have gotten to him. Poor kid.”

“Must have. He has balls and a dick, not like that little kid, so you must be right. Either that or he shaves every morning.” They both laughed, and I could here them zipping back up. “Someday someone’s going to clean Lenny’s clock.”

“The asshole deserves it, that’s for sure.” The slam of the door told me I was alone, so I wiped my ass and left for the next class.

My hair eventually regrew, and two months later I looked almost normal again. It wasn’t as long, but it was darker and coarser than it had been before my disfigurement and I could once more dress down and shower without embarrassment. Surprisingly nobody flicked me any shit about it. It had apparently happened before and wasn’t anything a guy had to be ashamed about. Lenny and his bunch had a nasty reputation. They would gang up and attack smaller kids but would invariably run from any fair fight. I spent hours, many of which should have been devoted to studying, contemplating what all I’d do to them if the opportunity ever presented itself. I wasn’t really a violent sociopath or anything like that but some of my imagined retaliations would have made Stephen King shudder.

I also made a lot of new friends during that year, one of which was the little guy whose nuts hadn’t yet dropped. His name was Paul Allen, but everyone called him Paulie. The fact that he was physically a little kid in the company of men didn’t seem to bother him; in fact he exploited his immaturity. He was usually the instigator of the harmless pranks and petty vandalism that school kids are noted for and he used his angelic appearance to skate from trouble every time. He seemed to connect with me right from the start, possibly because of my denudement, and even after my hair grew back he still seemed to identify with me. He was also somewhat shy and a loner, just like me. In April his growth spurt finally kicked in and his voice deepened and it was obvious that his balls were getting larger, and by the time school let out in June a smoke like haze of fine hair adorned his crotch. By that time he was just like the rest of us had been a couple years earlier: a first class asshole that was constantly telling dirty jokes and who never missed an opportunity to nail another guy in the balls.

I left town just after school let out to spend the summer on my uncle’s ranch and didn’t get back into town until the week before school started. I went to the school to register and almost didn’t recognize Paulie. He’d grown about three inches over the summer and had gained considerable bulk. He was still on the small side however, and looked more like one of the new freshmen than the seasoned sophomore that he actually was. He seemed a little aloof when I greeted him and acted like he didn’t really like me. He left with a couple of the new freshmen, kids his own size and maturity level that he was possibly more comfortable being around.

I had PE with Paulie again that year and it was obvious right away that he was now a full-fledged adolescent who now paraded naked around the locker room unashamed of his body. That was the first day. The second day he showed up just as I had last year: Completely devoid of hair below his neck. Lenny and his gang had struck again. Paulie looked to be close to tears as he meekly stripped and dressed, and even his new friends, the freshmen, tittered when caught a quick glimpse of his hairless crotch.

Any amusement that Lenny and his bunch got out of their latest prank was short lived. Paulie had told me that he had a big brother, twenty-some years old, that lived in California, but never said much else about him. His given name was Ralph but his bro’s in the Oakland motorcycle club all called him Big Red, and big he was. He and four of his fellow gang members rode into town and spent only a few days before firing up their oil-dripping straight-piped Hogs and heading back to California.

Five of the Lenny’s pals eventually returned to school sporting missing teeth and broken bones but Lenny never came back. Ron Harper witnessed the brawl and reported that Lenny had pulled a knife and tried defend himself. I just figured that Ron was exaggerating when he said he watched them hold Lenny down and use same knife to castrate him, but there was no denying the proof. They’d fastened Lenny’s scrotum, one nail through each nut, high on the trunk of a tree. The police didn’t discover it and it stayed there for over a month as a clear warning to anyone who might want to mess with the bother of a Brother.