The allure was too much for a portly preteen whose friends were all speedily leaving him behind in the world of music.

13 CDs for the price of one. Or some ridiculous thing like that.

I flipped the glossy and colorful mailer front to back in my hand. I had snatched it out of the stack of mail Dad had brought in the night before. 13 compact discs for the price of one. Simply fill out the card and send it in, they’d mail me four of them, then I’d send in a payment for just one freaking CD and they’d mail me the other eight.

I flipped the advertisement front to back again. I opened it up for the hundredth time. Inside were dozens of the most popular albums available.  I didn’t know any of the music. I wasn’t allowed to listen to much outside of Mom and Dad’s light sounds radio station. But I recognized and had already circled the names of lots of them. My friends were always talking about them. They were always singing random songs with each other. They had written the names of some of these bands on the leather bottoms of their backpacks.

And I wanted in.

I had to have them.

At one point I had written Pearl Jam on the bottom of my backpack just to fit in and my best friend loudly called me out on it in front of everyone on the school bus. “You don’t even know who Pearl Jam is!” he blurted.

“Yes I do! They’re an awesome band!”

He pointed at my backpack and started forcefully laughing. Hard. “Name one song they sing. Name even one song! I bet you can’t!”

I couldn’t answer. Mortified, I slunk into my seat, clutched my backpack to my chest, and silently resented my parents so much for their strict music rules. I grew up on Bette Midler and The Carpenters. The coolest song I knew was Cat’s in the Cradle. And believe me, my friends wouldn’t have thought it was cool that I knew every word to Barbara Streisand’s Yentl soundtrack, so I kept that one to myself.

Yes, I needed those CDs. My social life depended on it

I closed the mailer and studied it once more. I knew what I would have to do in order to get them.

Hidden deep in the back of Dad’s middle desk drawer in his den was his checkbook. I’d seen Mom write out enough checks to know how they worked. Date. Amount. Amount written out again in longhand. Memo. Signature. Dad would never notice fifteen bucks gone missing. I had seen his John Hancock plenty of times. The CD company would have no idea the check was forged. It was fool proof.

With plan in place, I filled out the mailer under Dad’s name and sent it on its way.

And, sure enough. 4-6 weeks later, a small box was sitting on the porch when I arrived home from school one afternoon. I snatched it up. “Columbia House.” Yes! It was here. I shoved it under my sweatshirt, ran downstairs as fast as my chubby legs could carry me, eagerly yanked my Simon and Garfunkel CD out of my Discman, and spent the next three hours listening to the most awful sounding crap I had ever heard.

I’d never listened to music so obnoxious and harsh. Picking a melody out of any of it was a tedious task for my untrained ears.

But it didn’t matter. I shoved every harsh thought about it to the back of my mind. It may have been awful crap, but it was the same awful crap that my friends were always talking about. Next time someone put me on the spot, I’d have all sorts of song titles ready to spew out at a moment’s notice.

After listening to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, and Stone Temple Pilots for three days, I carried through on phase two of my plan, forged a check for what I owed, and sent it off. A couple weeks later I was painfully trying to like a brand new stack of albums and as I did, I thought over and over about that checkbook. It was the easiest thing I’d ever done. No repercussions. No sign of the sin. No having to answer to anyone. And from there I began thinking about all the things I could do with this new access to easy money.

I never got the chance to do it again though.

“Dan, come up here and talk to me and your mom.” Dad yelled down to the basement a few days later. He sounded upset. And when Dad was upset, you didn’t dawdle.

Dawdling earned you an extra smack or two with the paddle or one of his size 13 tennis shoes.

He was standing by the door to his den waiting for me with arms folded. As soon as I walked past him, he shut the door behind me. That wasn’t a good sign. Mom was sitting tall in the stuffed floral chair in front of his desk. She was showing no emotion and didn’t make eye contact with me. That wasn’t a good sign either. He passed by me again and sat heavily into his large leather office chair. And then he just stared at me, his gaze centered on mine. He didn’t say anything for some time. That definitely wasn’t a good sign.

Finally, he spoke. Quietly. Not angrily. “Did you know that the bank sends me copies of all the checks I write?”

Oh crap. I shook my head slowly.

He kept his heavy stare centered on me. I looked away. “Come here and look at this.”

Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Eight steps later I was standing by his side. He pulled out a copy of the check I had written.

“Did you do this?”

I was too young to die. I was too smart to deny it. I couldn’t confess it with any amount of saving grace, either. Instead I broke down into a crying fit and word-vomited the truth about everything. I told him about the CDs. I told him about the check. I told him how hard it was to be the only kid who doesn’t get to listen to cool music.

He just sat. And listened. Watching me intently. Absorbing it. Waiting for me to finish.

After my tearful confession, I waited for him to pass his judgment. Would I do dishes for a month? Would I be grounded for a year? Would I get the world record for hardest and longest butt whoopin’ of all time?

Still he stared.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” He was looking deep into my soul now. He knew. He knew everything. He didn’t just know about the CDs. He knew about the masturbation too. How he knew, I had no idea. But his eyes told me. And again, I broke down into even louder sobs.

“Not that I want to tell you,” I said between blubs.

“Who do you want to tell?”

It was too late to turn back. “The Bishop.” You see, Mormons are supposed to go confess to their assigned Bishop any time they masturbate. I had learned that much from my friends.

Dad’s face never flinched. His eyes didn’t bulge like they always did when he got angry. His lips didn’t pierce. He didn’t give me his look and his famous huff. Instead he took it face on. “Is it masturbation?”

This was the first time I remember literally wailing uncontrollably in my life. “YES!” I said through strings of slobber. I knew that I would be hated and loathed by my own parents now. I knew that I would never leave the house again. I knew that I might not even make it out of that room. The end of my world had officially come.

“You will bring me those CDs. You don’t get to keep them. You’ll also pay me back for those CDs. And if you ever forge another check, there will be much bigger consequences.”

I looked at him through tear-filled eyes. That’s it? Really? Then I realized why the CDs didn’t matter. They were small potatoes compared to the real issue at hand. I had just told him that I masturbate. End my life already if you’re going to!

I looked over at Mom. She was sitting in the chair and she was starting to blubber as hard as I was.

But he didn’t end my life. Instead, he handed me the phone and said, “dial this number. You’re going to make an appointment with Bishop Moon and tell him what you’ve been doing.”

I took the phone and gave him a look that said, please don’t make me do this. Please. He shot me a look in return that said, do it. You do not want to see what happens if you don’t.

And so, I did. And I walked the two miles to the church the next day, and I sat in front of the Bishop, and I squeaked out to him that I was a dirty little masturbator. It was the worst and most consuming moment of my life to that point. I never hated my life and the church and my parents as much as I did sitting across from that man whom I barely knew, telling him that I liked to play with my tallywacker.

Of all the events that shaped me, I don’t know that any in my life were more profound than this entire experience was. Even twenty years later, I think back to it often. I think back to what I learned in all of it. I think back to how it shaped the entire rest of my future relationship with my father and the church. I think back to what it taught me was most important and where to put my focus.

I gained more fear and more respect for Dad that day. I also learned that the way we react to our children when they make their biggest mistakes will sit with them far longer than the way we react to their more frequent and smaller ones.

In truth, I know I got spanked and paddled a lot as a child, but I really don’t remember much of it at all because the spankings were tied to such silly events that were negligible in the long run.

But I promise you, a month never goes by that I don’t for some reason think back to that night in his den and still feel a mixture of gratitude, anger, and resentment to this day.

He could have really made me pay the price for the stealing. In fact, he probably should have. Instead, he taught me that sometimes there is more power in remaining calm and letting a person’s own guilt and conscience teach the lesson. I will always be thankful that he taught me that.

He also could have changed my entire life for the better from that point on. He could have made me feel normal and not disgusting or loathsome for my little naughty habit. Instead, he taught me that I needed to extrapolate the negative feelings of self-worth I was already experiencing and never be happy with myself so long as I couldn’t control my devilish urges.

I already struggled to think I was lovable because of it before the whole thing happened. And from that point on as a teenager, I never felt like I had any goodness in me at all. I felt that both of my parents and every leader of the church could see straight into my soul and know exactly what I was doing into a tube sock at least daily, because from there on out, the masturbation only became more frequent. That building lack of self-respect and self-worth leaked into my schoolwork, my ability to socialize, and my ability to defend myself against bullies.

I think I will always be resentful to some degree that he handed me the phone and taught me that sometimes we should shame and guilt others into feeling worthless so that our own beliefs can sink in more properly.

That single evening in time has shaped more of my fathering strategies than anything else. Nearly every time I find myself having to delve out a consequence to my child, I find myself thinking back to those events and asking myself two questions. Does the punishment fit the crime? And does the punishment teach him or does it fill him with guilt? If the answer is that it fills him with guilt, I alter my tactics and I reword my strategies.

Whew.

Having said all that, I realize that this particular chapter got both long and heavy. And so, I shall end with a list of funny terms for male masturbation so that we can get back on track, and then I shall hardly bring up masturbation again in the rest of this book. Hopefully you’re clever enough to understand that these chapters aren’t really about masturbation all. But this list sure is.

Slap boxing the one-eyed champ

Beating off

Lighting the lamp post

Taming the snake

Choking the chicken

Loping your mule

Greasing the flagpole

Cranking the shank

Rubbing one out

Seasoning your meat

Working your willy

Buffing the banana

Milking the bull

Jimmying your joey

Jerking the Johnson

Backstroke roulette

And, my personal favorite: assault on a friendly weapon

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What’s Our Relationship Status?

Should You Give an Ex a Second Chance?

Long-Distance Love vs. Local Connection

Trust in a Strained Marriage: Letters in the Attic

Dating Rules: Smart Strategy or Outdated Nonsense?