I was about eight first time I saw somebody else's wiener up close. It was an old dude, butt bucky naked cept for some running shoes and a straw hat. It was around midway through the Bay to Breakers, near the water station right before the first big hill.
Dude was crowding the water table by the divider jamming to some funk fusion band. I knew he was one of the "close your eyes," people. I could see his wrinkled ass cheeks flapping around under a grey ponytail, and my mom always gave us explicit instructions never to initiate eye contact or conversation with naked, drunk, or miscellaneous revelers, but that hill looked brutal and I was thirsty as shit.
So I jogged up and tapped him on the shoulder, more like a quick point push to hygienically ease him away. Dude turned around, smiled, handed me a cup, and kept it moving. Still though, pretty gross.
After seeing a lot of that type of stuff as a kid it was tough to understand what adults were talking about when trying to explain sexuality issues, because like I said after a while of being around weird it just becomes normal.
I came to believe the argument against a parade float shaped like a penis with dudes riding it full on making out in motorcycle chaps and speed o's was based more in redundancy than gayness. Same float every year, different colors sometimes, but still. And it's horrible with corners, and a damn fire hazard. Dudes are down below it on unicycles or something, they can't see shit.
Anyway, so yeah after I figured out that it's not "normal" per se to be seeing all that business so young it was strange for me to imagine how other kids figured out what's going on with their junk in relation to other peoples junk, I still assume trial and error and guesstimation.
My buddy Lo had it pretty well sorted out, he was known to say, "If you skate a spot in Castro you gonna see what you gonna see, but at least it ain't the Tenderloin." Which is ironic, because we almost got beat up in the Castro one night by some super aggro dudes that took offence to the noise we were making skating outside their apartment complex. Oh, and fleet week, don't even go outside it's a madhouse.
