The first suggestive book I ever held was my father’s copy of Candide. I have the volume here, with its “Ex Libris” bookplate and its penciled $1.50 used-book price. It was published by Hartsdale House in New York, in 1930, and in addition to Voltaire’s ideas, it carries illustrations by Mahlon Blaine. The translator is not acknowledged.

Some of the pictures have unclothed women. You can see breasts, butt cleavage, even the shadow of pudenda. I found the sketches provocative when I was 10 or so.

And then there were those National Geographic magazines in elementary school classes. Some issues featured articles about communities in undeveloped countries. There might be a photograph that included women, and then breasts were likely to be visible. These were not the perky units that would later be shown in Playboy and Hustler, but they were noted nonetheless, by boys and girls alike.

I knew Candide wasn’t trash, and we knew the Geographic pictures weren’t salacious. We snuck a little stimulation from them, but we didn’t feel any tarnish.

I was a little older when I got my hands on porn.

I think I was around 12. I was visiting in New York with Mom, and staying as usual at her sister’s house in White Plains. I bunked with my cousin Susie (3 years older than I), but right through the shared bathroom was her brother Jeff’s bedroom. Jeff was a year my senior and thoroughly obnoxious. He teased, he drooled, and he bored us to tears.

One day I slipped into his room and looked at his bookshelves. I pulled a paperback called The Amboy Dukes, scanned the back cover, and borrowed it. Total filth. The yellowy pages opened to a gang-rape-on-bus scene, and went on to abuse women from there. Took the top of my head off.

My aunt caught me with the book. She dragged me and the book to my mother and began lambasting me for reading such filth, repeatedly demanding to know where I got the thing but ranting non-stop so I couldn’t answer. When I finally got to say that the book was Jeff’s, well, that stopped the noise. It was a precious occasion for me.

After that it was kind of easy. I had friends with older brothers. All we had to do was sneak into their rooms and invade their stash.

Of course the porn didn’t work. We soon saw that every plot line could only be maintained by increasing the number of participants. The climax orgy scene was boring. We found that what worked instead of porn was a good book with appropriate moments of eroticism. Like Another Country, by James Baldwin, presented to me by my stepgrandmother about the same time. I remember she tried to take it back from me when she learned it had some sex in it. No way! I loved that book.