7 Sex for Kids

Keith’s first sexual fumblings began at five. He kissed a four-year-old girl in the backseat of his mother’s station wagon and enjoyed more-intimate sessions in the hayloft. “We practiced sex for a year or so—not sex as adults think, but sex for kids, kissing, touching a little bit, showing what we had. Mostly we kissed. We would kiss until we thought we had it right.”

He met a redheaded beauty at the Unsworth School and felt his first romantic stirrings. “But I only knew kissing, I didn’t know romance. We were in the same class from first to sixth grade, and I still think about her. It’s part of my fantasizing. When I was grown and living in the States, I would go back to Chilliwack to see her brother, but the real reason was to see her. She developed a rare disease, and the last time I saw her, she was in the hospital. I heard that she died.”

 

Keith’s early interest in sex soon led to curiosity and confusion about what went on between his parents. “My first realization was that anytime us kids got the belt, it was in their bedroom. That’s where I killed my victims later, in my sleeper with the curtain closed. Maybe there was a connection in my own mind.”

Late at night the boy would sit on the staircase trying to interpret bedroom sounds. “In the daytime I’d hear Dad say, ‘Gladys, why don’t you try to look sexy for me? Go to the store and buy something sexy.’ Sexy? I wished I knew what he meant. It was such a loaded word. Our parents expected us to learn sex by watching animals, but it didn’t take long to find out that was only a small part of the story. I wanted to ask Mom to explain, but I couldn’t get up the nerve.”

 

Keith and some schoolmates were playing at a neighbor’s dairy farm when a workman offered to advance their sexual education. “He stripped and made us do the same. He said that sex was touching our peepees together, and he started to play with his pecker until it got larger and erect. Then he asked us to touch him. He was making a move on a boy when I grabbed my clothes and ran. He yelled at me to not tell anyone. I thought, Don’t worry! I won’t.

“Later I asked the boy how he liked it. He said that it hurt and he told his father what happened and his father told him to keep it quiet. The dairyman did it to him doggy style and after it was over he forced him to lick his pecker. I was disgusted and didn’t want to hear about it. We never saw that man again. I always wondered how he got that way.”

 

Keith became even more confused about sex during a camping trip with his father and friends. He’d learned a song from an older boy, and he sang it to one of his father’s friends en route to the campsite. “He laughed so hard he nearly ran his car off the road. Around the campfire that night everybody was drinking, and he told my dad that Keith knew a cute song. Dad ordered me to sing it. I said, ‘Dad, it’s got some bad words.’ Dad said, ‘Sing it, Son!’ I said, ‘Do you promise not to hit me?’”

Les promised, and Keith sang a long, bawdy song that began:

Good morning, Mr. Murphy, God bless your heart and soul.

Last night I fucked your daughter, but I couldn’t find her hole….

And ended:

I finally got it out, sir. It was red, black, and blue.

Goddamn it, Mr. Murphy, next time I’ll buttfuck you.

Keith feared dire punishment, but his father kept his word. “After that, Dad turned me into his little monkey on a string. He’d haul me out in front of women and everybody else to sing that song. Around the house we couldn’t even whisper words like breast or sex. But in front of company I could use words like ‘buttfuck.’ I couldn’t figure adults out.”