Page 1 of Summer Lessons

Meet Mason Hayes

Twenty-seven years ago

“MOM! YOUshouldn’t let him run around naked like that!”

“But Mason, it’s beautiful outside. Seriously, how many days do we get like this on the peninsula?”

Mason was oblivious to the gorgeous March sunshine on his little brother’s bare ass. “ButMom, his penis is showing!”

Janette Hayes had been in her early thirties when she started having children. Mason would always think of her as she was on this spring day, in her sundress, her bare, pale feet digging into the lushness of the lawn of their tiny Redwood City backyard. Her dark brown hair cascaded down her back with only a few strands of silver to mark the fact that her nine-year-old son had aged her worse than cigarettes and heroin—her own words, leveled at Mason for most of his life.

“I know his penis is showing,” his mother said gently. “He’s three—he doesn’t care if his penis is showing. He can run around the lawn and pee in the corners.”

“ButMom, he’s gonna get the flowers pregnant!”

Later he would acknowledge that this look on his mother’s face—mouth open and closing in shock, dark eyes wide as saucers—was something he saw a lot, but that day it sort of stuck in his mind. It was the first time he realized that he horrified people just by speaking.

“No!” she protested, gasping a little. “You can’t get flowers pregnant, honey—”

“But we had thepubertyvideo,” Mason told her earnestly. “And the puberty video says that it’s the boy part that gets people pregnant.”

“Oh God, your father must have signed that. I donotremember that permission slip.”

“You signed it with my math homework and my English homework and the history test I got an A on and the science test I got an A on and—” Mason remembered everything. Sometimes his brain was so busy rememberingthingsthat he forgot that words, meaning, and people’s reactions all had a sort of car wreck whenever he opened his mouth.

“Iget it, Mason, I have only myself to blame! Now what you may not have gotten from the fourth-grade puberty video is that that thing—”

“A penis.”

“That penis can only make a humanwomanpregnant if it is inserted into the vagina and allowed to discharge—”

“Touching it makes it feel good,” Mason said. “But the video didn’t say that—I figured that out for myself.”

“That’s awesome, Mason, but maybe youkeepthat to yourself for a while, okay?”

“But I don’t understand! Why does it get big when you touch it, and how come boys can’t be pregnant!”

“Because boys don’t have a place in their bodies to make babies,” his mother said, her voice indicating she was hanging on to her patience by a thread. “That’s why they have to put the penis in the girl’s—” She paused and took a breath. “—vagina.”

“But I don’t want totoucha girl’s vagina!” Mason wailed. “I don’t want any girls touching my penis! I only wantboystouching my penis, but you just told me that boys don’t have any place for my penis to go!”

“Oh.” His mother blinked. “Okay. That’s a whole different story.”

“Is it a good story?” Mason asked urgently, trying not to cry. “Is it a story where the boy kisses the boy and gets his penis touched?”

“Sure,” his mother said, dazed. “That can be a story.”

“Then why wasn’t it in the video?” Mason demanded, furiously upset. “And where does the penis go?”

At that moment his brother Dane let out an excited squeal. “Penis gopee-pee!” he shouted, and then he proceeded to water his mother’s begonias.

“How did this happen?” his mother whispered. She looked like she had the night Dane had discovered chocolate syrup could be used to paint walls and the cat.

“He aimed and shot,” Mason said helpfully. “Just like Dad showed us with the Cheerios in the toilet. And how come he can touch his pee-pee outside and I can’t touch mine in my pants?”

“Because he’sthree, Mason.Three.And you were inschool, and all pee-pee touching needs to be done in private.”

“But what if another boy wants to touch my penis? How will I know?”